Day 178: Squirrel Wars 2021 have begun. Okay, so Tamias/Neotamias townsendii isn't a squirrel in the common usage of the word, but chipmunks including Townsend's are nonetheless members of the Sciuridae and therefore a "squirrel" in the scientific sense. Perhaps they are not as obnoxious or aggressive as Douglas Squirrel, those destructive grey monsters who eat all the birdseed and nest noisily in the attic (where, I am told, they may chew electrical wires and start house fires), but they still annoy me. At the first sight of a bushy tail in my garden, I break out the "relocation gear," two Hav-a-Hart traps, the smaller of which has only ever captured one chip. I bait them with a variety of things because you never know what the varmints wants for dinner. Tonight, it might be sunflower seeds or tomorrow, raspberries. Oddly, peanut butter is consistently rejected by the local Sciuridae and only draws rodents of another even less pleasant type. It won't be long before Townsend goes for a little ride, but unlike the gangsters of old, he won't be fitted with concrete overshoes. He'll be released into a wide new world where there is plenty of food and a comfortable habitat, and where he's likely to encounter at least one of his numerous kinfolk who have been transported previously in the back of my car.
