{"id":17587,"date":"2019-12-11T18:05:41","date_gmt":"2019-12-11T23:05:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=17587"},"modified":"2019-12-12T09:40:23","modified_gmt":"2019-12-12T14:40:23","slug":"now-i-miss-mrs-squirrel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=17587","title":{"rendered":"Now I miss Mrs. Squirrel"},"content":{"rendered":"<hr>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/M-mrs-squirrel.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"797\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-17588\" src=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/M-mrs-squirrel.jpg\" alt=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/M-mrs-squirrel.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/M-mrs-squirrel-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/M-mrs-squirrel-1024x680.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/M-mrs-squirrel-768x510.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<em><a href=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/mrs-squirrel-1-scaled.jpg\">Click here for high resolution version<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve posted a couple of times about Mrs. Squirrel, who gnawed her way into the attic through a ventilation grill, built a nest, and gave birth to four baby squirrels thirty feet up in the abbey&#8217;s attic. I quarreled with her often for not staying in the woods where squirrels belong, but of course I allowed her to remain in the attic until the little ones were big enough to live in the woods. It turns out that I never had to get rough with Mrs. Squirrel to evict her. She took her children, now half as big as she is, to live in the woods three mornings ago.<\/p>\n<p>It was Sunday morning, and I heard her scrabble down the back of the house at dawn, as usual. That was the last time I heard her on the house. The nest in the attic is now cold and empty. I was relieved, because now I can nail metal fabric over the ventilation grill, and baby squirrels will be born in the trees from now on.<\/p>\n<p>But she and I had become pretty good friends. I never tried to tame her, but we got along. Sometimes I&#8217;d go out onto the rear deck and call her, and she&#8217;d climb down to talk. She never got closer than about four feet, but she&#8217;d look me in the eye and bark back at me when I scolded her. <\/p>\n<p>This evening, I put a long lens on the camera and went out to look for her. When I called her, just behind the house, she came halfway down a tree to say hello. There was no sign of her children. But there are four squirrels&#8217; nest in that area where the children may be.<\/p>\n<p>All&#8217;s well that ends well, and I hope to remain friends with Mrs. Squirrel. She is a brave, good mother, and a fine activist for squirrels&#8217; rights.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p><strong>Update:<\/strong> Mrs. Squirrel came to visit this morning. I was on the deck and didn&#8217;t notice her at first, but she barked to get my attention from the tree that overhangs the deck.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/C-comes-to-visit.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1451\" height=\"1237\" src=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/C-comes-to-visit.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-17612\" srcset=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/C-comes-to-visit.jpg 1451w, https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/C-comes-to-visit-300x256.jpg 300w, https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/C-comes-to-visit-1024x873.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/C-comes-to-visit-768x655.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<hr>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Click here for high resolution version. I&#8217;ve posted a couple of times about Mrs. Squirrel, who gnawed her way into the attic through a ventilation grill, built a nest, and gave birth to four baby squirrels thirty feet up in the abbey&#8217;s attic. I quarreled with her often for not staying in the woods where &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=17587\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Now I miss Mrs. Squirrel&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-land"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17587"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17614,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17587\/revisions\/17614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}