Spent yesterday cleaning out from under my big oak tree. I plant a lot of annuals for the summer and had to clean up and mulch before planting. Ran out of energy so did not get the planting finished. Our little red squirrel who stalks the neighborhood had planted for me. Little holes everywhere and at the center of the hole, an acorn. I quess he could not resist the new mulch. Since I will not have time to plant much this week, I will clean up his planting Saturday. I pulled up quite a few oak seedlings this Saturday. I probably should have put them in pots and had some trees. Anyway, from reading the posts, I live in town sort of and I have racoons, opossum, and I can hear the coyotes in the evening. The deer are about a quarter mile down the street and so far have not spied any in my garden but I do watch for them, I hear they love hosta. Anyway, I quess my squirrel is my gardening buddy. Steffie

Sorry, I thought most knew about squirrel castration. It too is one of those things that supposedly do not happen. Male squirrels may during the breeding seasons may use their teeth any place on a rivals body. Since they are chasing each other they will grab any portion including testicles. This does not happen very often but if you see an overly fat squirrel with a damaged tail and have binoculars look at where the testicles should be. You will if your glasses are really good look for scars and or if damage is fresh as in my squirrel pieces of sack and tissue. Poor baby had full sack cut at bottom and part of one testicle hanging. Most of the information where people think they have a castrated squirrel is caused by the squirrels body not having the testicles desend until old enough to breed. Some biologist state that this is at about 1 year of age but this may vary. A similar process happens in male kittens. In the past it was suggested that male cats not be castrated until the testicles desended. In cats this is at about 9 months.

Not that I have noticed here. Fox squirrels used the be the primary one in this area and I have seen them jump from tree to distant tree branches with no hesitation. Probably the fox squirrels have figured out that the grays will knock enough feed down that they do not have to work. Our conservation department has printed several articles that the two groups do not interbreed. However we rarely see a pure squirrel of either type. You might start seeing some every interesting combinations. The one I really liked was the longer fox fur on a white bellied fat one.

Looks like a very healthy silver-phase fox squirrel to me. I don't see any bald patches and the tail is nice and fluffy. It's definitely NOT an albino, since it's not white and it had dark eyes. The overexposure of the photo is "washing out" the color, which is actually light gray.