When Nature Comes Too Close for Comfort

First of all, I live in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the nation, but it’s still the lesser settled western part of the U.S., and sometimes the wild animals infringe on our lives.

Some of these desert denizens venture into heavily populated areas to find easy food sources and water. It’s fairly common to see coyotes with their young pups crossing the streets or even to see a snake slithering its way across a golf course. Fortunately most of us know which critters are relatively harmless, and which we should give a wide berth.

Recently I had an experience that brought home this difference. I heard a noise that sounded like something was chewing on my house. Through the open window I realized the commotion was coming from the backyard and it sure sounded like the crunching of metal.

I looked out the window and didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. But as the noise continued, I opened the sliding glass door and stepped onto the patio to check further.

My attention was immediately drawn to a small potted plant in a plastic pot, a recent gift that I had placed inside a larger decorative clay pot. The plant was whipping back and forth even though there was not a hint of wind. As I focused on the scene, I noticed something else that was strange. The heavy-duty gold decorative foil that was still wrapped around the smaller plastic pot was methodically and vigorously being pulled up and out toward the back of the clay pot. I couldn’t imagine what could be causing this.

Within a few moments two pointy ears appeared over the rim of the pot, and then a scraggly tail. It was a very scrawny squirrel! And it was eating the aluminum foil as fast as it could free it from the plastic pot. I instantly thought the squirrel was rabid because it was eating the foil instead of the plant, and retreated quickly to the safety of the house.

Watching through the glass door, I was mesmerized as the squirrel used its front paws to unwrap the foil from around the plastic pot and ravenously devoured every scrap of it. The only squirrels I had seen before were those that live in the northern part of the state and they are fat with full bushy tails and they eat acorns, not crunchy foil.

Finally, I called a wildlife organization and when I described the situation, the receptionist laughed and assured me my squirrel visitor wasn’t rabid. She added, “If they’re hungry enough they will eat anything on your house that they can bite off,” and proceeded to give me an example that was startling. She said they’ve been known to eat the external metal vents for household clothes dryers.

While my instinct is to assist or get help for our fellow creatures on this planet, this time I couldn’t. The expert’s advice was two-fold: Don’t put out food for the squirrel as it would only encourage more wild animals to show up at my door, and buy a cage to trap it in case it comes back and then transport it back to the wild. When I looked again, I saw the squirrel exiting through the drainage hole in the patio wall.

Until this experience, my encounters with nature had been as a benevolent, appreciative bystander. Yet, I was always fully aware of the awesome power of nature and the possible dangers in its sometimes raw dramas. This is why I no longer watch survival-of-the-fittest wildlife programs on PBS at dinner time. It’s also why I’m not ashamed to admit that when I drive by a pack of coyotes, I am relieved to be viewing them from the safety of my car. That same good sense prevailed when I met a starving squirrel that was devouring heavy-duty aluminum foil like it was a piece of acorn pie. My motto is better safe than sorry – thus the rationale for sharing this cautionary tail.
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Copyright 2010 © by Fern Stewart Welch

The author’s books: “Tea with Elisabeth,” “The Heart Knows the Way,” and “You Can Live A Balanced Life In An Unbalanced World,” are available at Amazon.com and other online booksellers, as well as through major bookstores such as Barnes & Noble and Borders.