Out here in the Western United States we have a squirrel that is frequently confused with chipmunks. They are cute as heck and have little fear of humans and can get quite aggressive (see the video, linked below, of one climbing up my pants leg).
They live in the forests. You see them when you’re camping. The Forest Service forbids feeding them, but they are so cute… how can you not feed them? Anyway, I have a few photos.
This one showed up at base camp the night before starting a backpacking trip. That face, that expectant look… how could I refuse? I obliged with a pretzel.
Here are a couple of them standing guard on the Continental Divide in Colorado:
Here’s one on Colorado’s West Slope, watching a hilarious little drama unfold. I was camped above Grand Junction on the Piñon Mesa, where a couple of does were raising their fawns. One day Mama Deer came into camp and saw my cat. She’d never seen a cat before and was reeeeeally curious. Miss Kitty knew all about deer and was absolutely not interested in meeting. Mama Deer kept poking her nose under the motorhome from every side, trying to get a sniff of this strange, small cat-thing that was too small to be a predator, and Miss Kitty kept moving around down there, avoiding the doe.
I grabbed my camera too late to catch the deer-and-cat drama, but caught this Golden Mantled watching the show from a stump.
I would like to say a few words now about their taxonomic name, which was originally Spermophilus lateralis. “Sperm” means “seed,” “philo” means “love,” and “lateralis” means “of the side” (i.e., not above or below). Translation: Seed lover that lives on the ground.
That’s pretty apt. I don’t think they climb trees; I’ve never seen one in a tree. They make little tunnels under the ground, where they hoard their food and hibernate through the winter, but they don’t go very deep. I am sure there are lots and lots of trees in the forest that were planted this way when the squirrels’ food got wet and germinated.
For some reason, biologists have recently decided to split the Spermophilus genus. These little guys and girls’ new genus is Callospermophilus. I’m told that “callo” means “beautiful.” I guess it was the closest Latin word they could come up with for “cute.”
So, my own translation for the taxonomic name is: Cute seed-eater that lives on the ground.
Here’s a video of one that climbed up my pant leg to get a peanut:
And here’s a video of one that was determined to get into a can of peanuts that I was saving up for the chipmunks. S/he didn’t care that there was a human with a camera filming the whole thing:
I’ve saved my best story about these cute little things for last. A couple of years ago, I was camped at Davis Lake in central Oregon. Beautiful spot and heavily infested with chipmunks and squirrels. I decided to photograph them. Here’s one that closely watched me:
It might or might not be the same one that got into the motorhome. It happened in the same campsite, within a few days of taking this photo. But there it was one day. I tried to shoo it out with a broom, but it was scared and nervous and kept running past the open door. Finally, it ran to the back and got up onto the bed where Miss Kitty was sleeping. “Oh, good,” I thought to myself. “She will wake up, and that will be the end of the squirrel.”
The cat did not wake up. Oh, bother. I’m going to have to catch the thing and put it outside myself.
You do NOT pick up these animals! They have a nasty, nasty bite and can possibly carry rabies. So I went outside to the campfire woodpile to retrieve my thick leather gloves.
I was returning to the motorhome, putting on gloves as I walked, when I saw a striped streak of lightning shoot out the door, with a cat right behind it! That thing shot a good twelve feet before it touched ground, and Miss Kitty was airborne for at least half of that distance.
It landed in some brush and she never found it. But I laughed, and laughed and laughed, harder than I’ve probably laughed ever since.