Subject: [Tweeters] A Squirrel Suprises
Date: Nov 10 11:34:59 2013
From: jeff gibson - gibsondesign at msn.com


Just got home from walking the dog around our nice North Everett neighborhood, after having had a new life experience! I heard a Grey Squirrel!



While our native Washington state "conifer squirrels", Douglas and Red, are famously noisy, I've never heard so much as a peep out of an Eastern Grey Squirrel. And I've seen thousands of them. Visiting New Mexico a few years ago, I was surprised to hear the local Arizona Grey Squirrels make a loud 'chuffing' noise. " Gee", I thought " our Grey Squirrels at home are quiet as a fire hydrant !".



And they have been, in my Eastern Grey Squirrel experience, which spans more than fifty years of city livin' here in the Puget Sound area. Until today that is.



Walking ol' Max up the sidewalk, I heard an unusual bird call coming from a nearby street tree, a loud call that I couldn't quite place. "Scrub Jay?", I thought, but that didn't quite fit. " A young Crow?", sorta like, but wrong season. Definitely some sort of corvid, I thought, but then all sorts of strange, loud clucking sounds started coming out of the same plum tree, interspersed with the corvid -like calls. " What in the world is this bird?", I really was wondering.



Well, it was just a regular ol' city Grey Squirrel making a ton of noise! I was flabbergasted. Maybe all you "squirrel whisperer's" hear this all the time, but for me this was a first. Missing something like this for more than fifty years is sort of miraculous, maybe?.



Jeff Gibson,

Everett Wa