I feed squirrels in our garden too. They are tree squirrels, not ground squirrels. They do not damage the roses, except for the odd occasion when they might dig a large hole in the dirt in a small pot where a rose is growing to look for or bury nuts. I have seen, once or twice, one sitting in a tree with one rose blossom. They are so funny - they nibbled on it, while rotating it around as we do when eating ears of corn. It took them about 3-5 minutes to eat all of the petals. Luckily this is a very rare occurence.

I find them fascinating. The breeding ones build very large nests high in trees called dreys. Evidently they have multiple entrances, and rooms for storing food, a nursery for the babies, and other things. The babies emerge when they are what I would call "teenagers" - not tiny but about 2/3rds the size of the adult ones. The newly emerged squirrels are so cute - they are very curious, and will come down the trunk of a tree to get very close to me, or even my cats when we have them outdoors on leashes. (of course the cats go into hunting mode, but the squirrels are so much faster than the cats, they avoid them easily.

One year, I saw a mother squirrel with a baby on her back, with its tail wrapped around her neck to hold on. It was much smaller than the ones I usually see. So, I presumed she had come down to get it because it fell out of the nest/tree. Then I realized a large crow was harassing her and trying to attack the baby. I scared the crow away, and the mother squirrel climbed back up the tree with her baby.

Then I found out that single adult squirrels build themselves small nests which they sleep in every night, all year long. They used to do that on our house in the high part of the 3 story tall rose bushes. Our house is a duplex with a large flat on the third story, and our tenants told me that one of those nests was only 2 feet from one of their windows, and they liked seeing the resident squirrel climbing up each night to put itself to bed.

Jackie