{"id":14373,"date":"2024-10-04T18:44:03","date_gmt":"2024-10-04T23:44:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/?p=14373"},"modified":"2024-10-04T18:44:04","modified_gmt":"2024-10-04T23:44:04","slug":"return-of-the-rock-squirrel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2024\/10\/04\/return-of-the-rock-squirrel\/","title":{"rendered":"Return of the Rock Squirrel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It’s been a while — more than six years<\/a>, in fact — since I devoted any pixels to rock squirrels. That’s primarily because we haven’t been able to observe many of them, and I don’t know why. I expected that they would be more plentiful given the rather large family I wrote about in the post linked above, but that didn’t happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we’re beginning to get regular visits from [at least] one and it’s always a treat. Rock squirrels are the more skittish and better behaved cousins to the Eastern Fox squirrels that swarm through our trees, drop half-eaten pecans on our deck, and sploot on our back porch during the hottest days of the summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rock squirrels can climb trees but they rarely do, preferring to forage for pecans in our lawn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Nom nom.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But they are quite wary, and will flee the premises if they just spot our movement in the house through a window pane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
And away we go…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It’s the splooting that caught our attention. We’d never seen a rock squirrel do it, and it was almost like it had been watching the tree squirrels and thought, “hey, I could do that!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This one was prone and flattened, but alert…it apparently wasn’t there for snoozing, like the tree squirrels. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grabbed my DSLR with long lens and cautiously pointed it around a doorway in an attempt to get some photos before it clocked me and took off. If you look carefully, its throat has a bit of a bulge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Photo:<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I zoomed in a bit closer and caught it holding something in its mouth with its feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Nom nom redux<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

It stuffed the pecan back in its mouth, taking on the appearance of an animal with the mumps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Not my best side…I’m outta here.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The instant I snapped the last photo, it somehow sensed my presence and made a hasty exit from the porch and deck, under the fence, and down to the rocks on the creek bank where it has a den.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a prolonged absence, we’re once again being visited by one or more rock squirrels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[234,437],"class_list":["post-14373","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wildlife-mammals","tag-rock-squirrel","tag-splooting","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/header_rocksquirrel.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14373"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14388,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14373\/revisions\/14388"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}