Ojai Naturalist

I have come to realize that it has been a very long time since I have updated you on our three squirrels: Precious, a female, and Mr. Pito, son of Sally. In the fall of 2016, after my last essay on them (see essay “Our Squirrels; Mr. Pito”), our Sally disappeared abruptly one day, never to be seen again. I will never know why, however with all the predators around here, hawks, owls, bobcats and coyotes, it might be a wonder that she lasted as long as she did. My hunch would be the owls, we have a lot of Great Horned owls around.

Spring of 2017 brought even more tragedy to our squirrels. Pito Boy, my pet name for Mr. Pito, started to spend time south of us. Soon we were only seeing him a few times a month. One day he showed up with an injury to his right front paw.

Or course I don’t have a clue as to how he obtained it. Very shortly after this photo was taken he was never seen again. He was a very gentle little soul. I trained him from the time he was leaving the nest in 2014 to take the walnuts from me very gently. He was unlike Precious, who would just attack the nut, and you better watch your fingers. She always seemed nervous and antsy. Sally, Pito’s mom, was in between the two of them. Pito Boy was the only juvenile that ever came in with it’s parent out of the several litters we observed. I’ll miss my little Pito Boy.

Around the same time that Pito was injured Precious developed a large cyst on the top right of her head between her eye and ear.

It showed up one day and continually became worse. After a period of a few weeks however it slowly healed. She now was our only squirrel. Come the Fall of 2017 it was her turn to disappear and never be seen again, just like the others. Life is like that in nature. Sometimes it is exceedingly short, sometimes not. You have to really, really pay attention! One thing is for sure, nobody gets out of here alive.

Your’s in Nature,

Backwoods Bruce