Welcome to the 2008 Squirrel Gymnastics competition.
Today's event: compulsory seed picking on the dead sunflower apparatus
It was quite a show. Well, enough of a show to catch my attention anyway.
My neighbor grows sunflowers (a grand total of three sunflowers) against the side of his house that faces my dining room window. To be honest, they've seen better days. Only two stalks remain standing. Actually two stalks remain hanging. He bungee-corded them by their wobbly necks to his gutter. The sunflower gallows.
I noticed this morning that a squirrel was perched on the sad wilted head of the biggest sunflower, picking away at the dead petals. A few dried petals at a time drifted down to the ground as the squirrel busily searched for sunflower seeds. (I'm assuming this of course. She could have been playing "He loves me, he loves me not" for all I know. It also could have been a male squirrel. I didn't look closely, and you just never know about squirrels these days.)
She had some pretty good moves too. At one point all that was visible was her tail, when she literally clung upside down to the underside of the flower to get to the seeds. All I could think was, this squirrel is going to fall right off this thing and break its little neck. mrMimi and I tried to get pictures, but I doubt they are very good. There was no way we could have gotten close enough without interrupting the performance.
All of a sudden, it leapt from one sunflower to the next, a fairly high degree of difficulty I thought. Unfortunately they just don't make sunflowers like they used to, and the squirrel tipped off the flower, managed to regain its balance, and slid very smoothly right down the stalk.
A remarkable performance. The judges gave it a perfect 10. I concur.
