Ann Arbor's "chonky" squirrel

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

The brown bears of Katmai have become famous for their annual pre-hibernation weight gain, celebrated during a well-publicized “Fat Bear Week” event each Fall for several years now. It’s good clean fun as the bears are doing what they naturally do, and they need all the fat they can get in order to survive their winter slumber; when the survivors emerge next spring, they are damn near skin and bones.

My feelings about the squirrels on the University of Michigan campus are less positive:

These squirrels are unnaturally fat, being fed a steady diet of junk food from the people in the area. It’s way more fat than they need for the winter, and it’s surely wrecking their joints and shortening their lifespans compared to their more rural kin. I’ll confess to having thrown a handful of nuts toward a squirrel or two in the past, but people are reportedly giving these squirrels straight-up junk food - candy, potato chips, french fries, that sort of thing. Not cool.

2

My Michigan squirrels are almost that chonky because I feed them unsalted nuts (bakers walnuts, pecan, almonds and bird seed mix) from Costco all winter. No junk food. I figure If they get too fat and slow predators will pick them off. Mine seem to be thriving because there are enough of them to compete for my leavings that only one or two are a little big.

Salted foods and other junk will cause the kidney damage because they are so small compared to us. It is cruel to do this to an animal, wild or donestic.

3

We feed our squirrels unsalted peanuts, which is better for all of us because I am much less likely to grab a handful for myself every time I toss some.

mmm

4

And so, on this fine November day, you can be lulled into contentment by the soothing wheeze of morbidly obese squirrels, and the gentle thumps as they fall from trees.