They malign me when they call me Gutter Squirrel, ’cause that is the route I used to the take out joint they call the Food Dish. First of all, it is a squirrel feeder or maybe if you’re particular, a squirrel/bird feeder. There is no dish involved. It’s a block of seed or maybe fruit and seed, usually incarcerated in a metal cage.

Call me Kit, ’cause I’m the pathfinder who discovered the route to the Food Dish. Don’t let them tell you it was Hoover, the jumping squirrel. It has to be directly over his head for him to find anything. He can’t even make it home to our drey, unless its still daylight.

This past fall, the Food Dish, tried to commit suicide by falling off the nail it was on and crashing to the ground. The fat humans tried to blame me, but there are no witnesses. I can neither confirm or deny that I avoided ending up as squirrel tartar for some buzzard by jumping off before that thing hit the ivy. Or maybe it fell off the hook when I was pulling it up closer to the gutter where I was hanging. I’m not admitting anything.



The fat male finally got tired of putting the Food Dish back on that same hook so he moved it to a nail on the porch side of the roof overhang rather than directly under the gutter.
Since I knew the Food Dish location very well, I crawled up on the roof and hung from the gutter a few days in a row, just to make sure I wasn’t the one who had misplaced the Food Dish. No, it was the fat male.



I had to get creative to access the new location. First, I tried hanging from the gutter and swinging over to the cage, but it was too far for even me to stretch. Let’s not discuss the sideways jump from the vertical support–if it weren’t for my squirrel- like reflexes, I’d have ended up as Squirrel Tartar. But you can’t outwit me-my vertical jump would win me a gold medal if there were ever a Rodent Olympics. Now I’m back dining at the Food Dish as often as the fat male condescends to restock it.
Some other, less talented squirrels show up to eat the food that falls from the Food Dish, ’cause even a gourmand such as myself can’t help the seeds from falling away from the brick.


