Squirrel Shenanigans

As we were sitting down to eat dinner Saturday evening, we happened to notice not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but six squirrels in our yard, two of which were locked in an epic, no-holds-barred brawl. We sat at the table, calmly eating dinner while watching the melee unfold.

"I bet it's some kind of Saturday night fight club," Wendy remarked.

Eventually the two squirrels settled down and the crowd dispersed among the various nearby trees. We can only guess as to what they were really fighting about. (girls)

And in other rodent news, it appears that a family of chipmunks has taken up residence underneath our front porch. Wendy happened to see one darting underneath it as she went to check the mail earlier this week.

While writing this post, I learned, thanks to the magic of wikipedia, that squirrels and chipmunks belong to the Sciuridae family of rodents, and that black squirrels (which I saw several times growing up in northeastern Oklahoma) have been spotted in the Fox Lake area of Illinois, a mere ten minutes away from our house.

Hopefully Sciuridae will be our only exposure to Rodentia, and we won't have to deal with the Muroidea superfamily.