Hi folks, just joined and thought I better say a quick hello.
I found your board by googling for information about squirrels and it looks like a great place!
I live in London, and for the last 7 or 8 years have lived in a first-floor flat right on the edge of a park so we see a lot of wildlife. The road is gated and lined with trees so it wasn't long after I moved in that I noticed a plentiful amount of gray squirrels running about and climbing up the outside of the building and on to the window ledges. I started putting out a few peanuts for them and that was it, I was hooked! They are such cute, intelligent creatures, with so much character, and the more I observed them and got to know them I could identify particular regulars just from the way they behaved. I fell in love with the fuzzy little fellas.
I still feed them and put water out for them every day, and although I have lost a couple of favourites over the years (R.I.P. Squizzy and Sammy), I still have a handful of regulars that show up every day for their munchies!
The reason I was googling for info in the first place concerns my oldest regular at the moment, Smudgy. I have known him for three or four years now and he knows me well enough to hop through the window and follow me into the kitchen sometimes when he can't wait for treats. He has been through the wars recently, and somehow got his tail mangled...the fur has grown back but part of it was broken so he has roughly half his original tail now poor little fella, but it never seems to get him down!
He disappeared for a few days recently and I was worried, but a couple of days ago he turned up at the window perfectly fine apparently. The only thing I've noticed is that the white fur around his mouth seems to be discoloured, it's more of a brown colour now. I thought the fur may just be stained from something he'd eaten, but a few days have passed and it's still the same. I was wondering if anyone knew of a reason why his fur may have undergone this sudden change in colour, he's not displaying any symptoms of being ill, I couldn't find anything online about it.
I better stop rambling for now, if I can work out how I'll try and post a picture of Smudgy...thanks for listening folks, it's nice to be amongst fellow squirrel lovers!