“A squirrel is the weed of the animal kingdom.”

So, all this discussion of weeds makes me think about squirrels, because I actually really like squirrels and I know that some people think of them as a pest or a nuisance. And I recently — um, well, my birthday present to myself was purchasing a bird feeder that has a camera in it. It takes videos of, um, any creature that lands on it, like a bird that, that lands and it has, then it has — goes back to some database and identifies the bird and then like notifies me, the bird feeder owner, that there’s been a visitor and I can like, you know, look at the, look at the video and, you know, pick which still shots I want to keep, if I want to keep any of them and so on.

So I was off to a slow start first couple of days. I don’t know, the birds didn’t know about it or I didn’t have the right seed in there and nobody came. Finally, I started getting some finches and a cardinal and, um, I kind of changed up the food a little bit. And then, voilà, after about a week I had my first squirrel visit. And, um, you know, some people hate when squirrels get into their bird feeders. I like squirrels, so I really don’t mind.

But, um, just today — like, now the squirrel is like, seeing this little bird feeder as like — as a true, reliable source of snacking. And I just opened the app recently ’cause I got a little notification, “Oh, you’ve had visitors!” And I looked and it has, you know, like this sort of set of cards, it’s like a postcard every time it has a critter — I should say bird, visits. And it was like, “27 minutes ago, squirrel. 23 minutes ago, squirrel. 18 minutes ago, squirrel.” I mean it was like a stack of like, like 10 cards, of like squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. And I just had to laugh because that, I mean, that’s like such a — that is the perfect, um, outline of, you know, most people’s experience with squirrels with their bird feeder. Once they find it, like you’re really in for it. Now, I will say, also, when I went, when I went through all those cards, because a black-capped chickadee was also a visitor, so that’s new. I haven’t had one of those before, so that was good news. But, um, yeah. So, so a squirrel is, you know, the weed of the animal kingdom, or at least one of the weeds of the animal kingdom, but I’m a big, big squirrel fan, so.