Last year I saw this tweet that so deeply resonated with me:
1. did you attend a college with squirrels on campus
2. did people assert that your school’s squirrels were, in some way, different from most squirrels— Rodger Sherman (@rodger) December 18, 2018
Squirrels are abundant across my own campus in New York City and I have heard numerous students remark that our squirrels are somehow better/different than the squirrels in the rest of the city. We’ve even had our fair share of squirrels in classrooms:
LET HIM FREE LET HIM FREE pic.twitter.com/zbfSTwdjW4
— Fordham Wildlife (@FordhamSquirrel) October 16, 2013
It’s no surprise that squirrels are using the anthropogenic environment (as we’ve written about here and here), and last week I caught a squirrel climbing on the window security bars. As I stopped to watch, I was surprised to also see this squirrel caching food under the window sill. Is this a new way to store food? Does it do a better job of preventing the cached food from rotting? I don’t know, but I’m curious if anyone else has noticed this behavior in their beloved campus squirrels.
Have you noticed a squirrel caching food in an odd place? Do you have a photo or video of an urban species doing something unusual? What about a rare plant or animal that you were surprised to find in a city? If so, let Lindsay know or Tweet at us and you could be featured as a future observation of the week!
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