As I was trying to come up with an idea for this week’s blog post, my husband, Terry, made a suggestion: “Why don’t you write about Psycho Squirrel?”
Last fall, we started tossing peanuts in the shells to squirrels in our backyard. We were captivated by the show they put on as they acrobatically chased each other along the fence and through the tree branches. Plus, we liked being nice to our furry neighbors.
Most of the squirrels picked up the peanuts and scurried away, burying them to eat in the winter. A couple of squirrels, however, were smart. They learned that humans meant food, and every time they saw us, bounded over to the ground below our back deck. They’d sit on their hind legs, twitch their tails, and look up at us expectantly. Of course, they were rewarded with peanuts.
Aw, aren’t they cute?
Well, they started getting brave, and crept up the steps of the deck. We opened the back door, which led into the kitchen, and tossed out a peanut. The squirrels scurried away with the peanuts, buried them, and came back for more. So then we squatted down low, cracked open the full-length glass storm door, and held the peanuts at their nose height. They were skittish at first, but soon began taking the peanuts right from our fingers.
They’d sit on the deck, hold the peanut to their mouths and roll it, as if looking for a place to bite the shell. Sometimes they ate the peanuts, and sometimes they ran away, buried them, and came back for more. If we weren’t right at the door, we could hear them tapping on the glass with their tiny claws.
Aren’t they cute?
We ended up with three “pet squirrels—”one day they all kept coming to the door like a tag team. Eventually, if they saw us, they’d leap through the trees to the ground below the deck and then run up the steps. When they saw us walking up the driveway, they followed. We started keeping a small ceramic bowl filled with peanuts on the counter next to the back door, so they’d be handy when our squirrel buddies showed up. We imagined that they really appreciated us when 18 inches of snow blanketed the ground and all their peanuts from the fall were hidden.
A few weeks ago, spring finally arrived, and we exchanged the glass in the storm door for a screen. We hadn’t seen the squirrels in awhile, but one showed up. She looked well fed, but still remembered how to beg for a handout.
I opened the screen door, held a peanut low for her, and she took it. She came back several times; I fed her about five peanuts. Then I had to go back to work. I closed the screen door, but the main back door was open to let the warm breeze into the house.
A couple of hours later I walked back into the kitchen and stopped short. The screen by the door handle was shredded—someone had broken into the house! Then I noticed the ceramic bowl was empty, there were broken peanut shells all over the floor, and a small yellow puddle on the counter.
The squirrel had chewed through the screen, eaten all the peanuts, and left. I couldn’t believe it. I shut the main back door—wood with glass panes at the top—so she couldn’t come back in. But she had learned well, and a little while later I caught her trying to climb through the hole in the screen again.
That was it. Now it was No Contact with the squirrel.
Terry took the screen out so it could be repaired. The squirrel didn’t know this, so when she next saw me in the kitchen, she leaped at the door, expecting to cling to the screen. Instead, she slammed into the regular door with its glass panes. With nothing to hold on to, she slid to the deck.
We stayed on the No Contact program, even though the squirrel kept following us around the yard and begging. No more handouts, no more bowl of peanuts on the counter by the door. In fact, since we couldn’t really tell the squirrels apart, none got fed. One overly aggressive squirrel had ruined it for everyone.
After a couple of weeks, hoping the pushy squirrel had forgotten that she had been sponging off of us, we replaced the screen, which had cost $25 to fix. It was fine for awhile, but the other day, I walked into the kitchen to find holes in the screen next to the door handle. She didn’t forget. But at least there were no peanuts on the counter, so the squirrel didn’t come in.
Now the screen needs to be repaired again. “That squirrel owes me $50 for the two screens,” Terry complained.
We don’t think the squirrel is going to pay. In fact, it’s probably going to cost us even more, because now Terry has decided we should invest in pet-proof screens.
Sigh. And it all started because the squirrels were so cute and we wanted to be friendly.
oh, those adorable, penniless, screen-chewing, peanut-addicted sociopathic squirrels…this was spit-coffee-on-keyboard funny!
Hi Donna,
This post brings together a number of concepts I’ve been thinking about lately.
I recently heard a political commenter, speaking about our recent federal election, describe leadership races and elections, particularly how voters react/respond to potential leaders, as ‘atavistic’. That turned on a lightbulb for me, because I’d recently been thinking about human predators as being more atavistic than the rest of us. And atavistic behaviour is all about body language, both individual and group. I’d also been thinking about how the ‘masses’ of society generally prefer sociopaths/psychopaths to ‘earnest’ people, because when they’re in public mode sociopaths make people feel good, whereas earnest people are often raising alarms (which are warranted), and those alarms (if the danger isn’t immediately imminent) make people feel unhappy. Alarmingly, I’ve started to see a number of articles pointing out how public & business leaders who are higher on the psychopathic/sociopathic spectrum are more emotionally intelligent than others (a la Daniel Goleman).
To get to the point of your post: 1) I used to work in a National Park where no matter what your job you spend an inordinant amount of your time educating the public about WHY you shouldn’t feed wild animals (particularly predatory animals). 1) I currently live on an urban street in a large city where a coyote has killed and mauled several pets, and where, as is always the case, neighbours have been feeding it. It’s been very contentious (last year we had newspeople blanketing our street for weeks and my neighbours were on the news on a regular basis). Just like in the human predator situation, people seem to line up on either side. Those people who’ve been victimized – or know someone who has – want to make protection the primary consideration. There are people who portray this as “These are wild animals who have more right than we do to be here and we have no business eliminating this wild creature and isn’t it nice that we have these beautiful animals here, and isn’t it so wonderful that we’re living ‘harmoniously’ with nature?”, coming up against those who say “We have young children and we can’t let them play outside, what kind of insanity is this that we’re protecting this animal who has killed pets 20 feet away from their adult owners and 30 feet away from two-year old children?”
What neither side seems to realize, something all of us in Parks Canada learned over and over and over (ad nauseum), was that there is a fundamental difference between a wild animal – which is afraid of humans and poses minimal (meaning reasonable and predictable) threat – and a habituated wild animal which has lost its fear of humans and will do pretty much anything to get what it wants.
And, of course, the reasons never to feed wild animals are exactly your situation. There was a wonderful article (which I can’t find at the moment) which stated it perfectly. It said something along the lines of “If you feed a wild animal so that it comes to your door you aren’t ‘taming’ it. It is just as wild as it ever was. What you’re doing is bringing a wild animal to your door and making it change its habits to feed in human environments.”
Unfortunately many of us have been brought up with two primary “Walt Disney” views of life – both of which it seems to me are equally harmful: ‘cuddly’ wild animals and handsome princes/pretty princesses. Both of those ‘views’ of life are not much more than setups for victimization and the creation of harmful environments (as in your recent post about the next generation of victims – about your god-daughter after her confirmation).
What I find fascinating is what happens after people are educated. Once they realize how they are playing a part in creating a dangerous situation most people are reasonable and follow the example of you and your husband. They stop feeding the animal and check their yards to make sure that they are not inadvertantly leaving out ‘coyote bait’. But there are certain neighbours, very much like situations with human predators, who are knowingly protecting both the aggressive coyote AND the people who are feeding it, and subtly ridiculing those people who are trying to get the coyote to move on.
So it’s helped me to start seeing these types of predators as wilder versions of human beings, and to go into ‘bear mode’ when I spot one. And to give their protectors an equally wide berth.
I’ll include a couple of articles on why you shouldn’t feed predators – it’s interesting to compare this situation to its human counterpart – there are a lot of parallels!
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040805/news_lz1e5brodderi.html
http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/pn-np/ab/banff/natcul/natcul17.aspx
There was an article (another one I can’t locate at the moment) which documented that every aggressive coyote killed in a particular location had human food in their stomach contents. So basically, it was humans who were rewarding bad behaviour who were increasing the problem, and that was why an education program was so badly needed. This article says something similar:
http://www.walnet.org/stanley_woods/brushwolvz/vansun-000504.html
So here’s a tagline you could use for your education campaign: “Stop feeding the sociopath”.
There is a line from the last article I posted which I think says it all (and kind of proves my point comparing psychopaths/sociopaths with wild animals).
Read the following line, and then read it again but this time substitute the word ‘sociopath’ for ‘coyote’ and son/daughter/friend etc… for ‘dog’:
“If you think a coyote is trying to play or mate with your dog, chances are it is trying to eat your dog, so don’t let them run together.”“
Annie, a very very good response to Donna’s very very good article.
ErinB and I both had bears come into our yards, find food and keep coming back….I have a bear trap set for mine for another few days, but like most mooches he has taken a powder for a few days and I am sure he will be back as soon as the trap is removed.
Of course in the case of the wild animals, we really are NOT taming them…and one thing I did learn when I was a wild life photographer and worked for my P-sperm donor who was also a wild animal dealer, not only filming animals but importing them, is that WILD ANIMALS are STILL wild animals. You can make them unafraid of humans but you can’t “domesticate them”—-even if you take a lion or tiger cub off it’s mother the second it is born and nurse it by bottle or on your family dog, it is NOT GOING TO BE A DOG OR A PUDDY CAT when it grows up, it will still be a lion or a tiger with the lion or tiger’s disposition, just no fear of man–which means that when it gets pithed, as large cats tend to do, it strikes out with teeth and claws just like it does in the world, and without any FEAR of humans.
That’s why I stories from people about how “sweet” my pet cougar is or my pet wolf, or my pet Pit bull dog….”sweetie pie” may not have hurt you YET but GENETICS WORK and you can’t domesticate an animal in one or two generations, a wild animal is a wild animal, and there is a reason our ancestors didn’t domesticate the zebra instead of the donkey….the zebra cannot be reliably domesticated no how many generations you have it in captivity….and they are very prone in anger to reach around and literally bite your arm off, they are NOT just cute donkeys in striped PJs. They are DANGEROUS animals. There is also a reason our ancestors domesticated the house cat and not the lion or tigers…..and house cats are only half-way domesticated just because of the nature of the beast.
Cattle have been domesticated for generations, but buffalo even if hand raised are still dangerous animals when they grow up who still must be very carefully handled by professionals in order not to get killed or seriously hurt. (rare exceptions)
Humans as a species have intermarried so that in most case the general disposition can’t be seen by just observing the “breed” or race or body type, the human species is pretty much a mongrel type, the only way we can decide whether one is trustworthy or whether like EB’s bear who found food and kept coming back, or whether like Donna and Terry’s Psycho Squirrel, if you treat them kindly they are willing to tear in and rob and destroy, and pith on the plate to show their contempt is to get close enough to assess the personality and behavior, the honesty, and compassion. Sometimes we end up like Terry and Donna with our homes or our hearts ripped open and damaged, before we even know our “friend” is a psychopath….I’m just glad they didn’t feed the cute little bear.
Oh, dear…I loved this squirrel post. So like the human psycho’s. The parallel is amazing.
At least we can spot wild animals. When it comes to “wild humans” – sociopaths – they, unfortunately look just like we do.
So we become captivated by their behavior, feel sorry for them, want to help them, want to be nice to them – and then are shocked when they turn on us.
We weren’t doing something stupid, like feeding squirrels. We were engaging in normal human behavior with someone who seemed to be likable.
We need to be educated to stop encouraging the wild humans the minute we see aggressive behavior. Unfortunately, we’re educated to “give people another chance.”
The sociopaths, of course, are fine with that. All they want is the handout.
Donna,
‘We weren’t doing something stupid, like feeding squirrels.. ‘ glad that you see the error of your ways. snort. 🙂
edit: oops, had another line in there, that wasn’t yours. fixed now. Copy and paste can be dangerous!
Annie – Great post and lots to consider!
Your post should be a thread article, so that it gets the comment it deserves. Why don’t you ask Donna to use it as such?
Donna, you are absolutely right!
When I talk to people who have a relative or child in prison and they say “Johnny made a MISTAKE and robbed a bank.” I want to scream NO!!!!! HE MADE A ****CHOICE**** AND ROBBED A BANK.
A “mistake” is when you add 2 +2 and get 5, but getting a gun and going into a bank and demanding money is not a MISTAKE, it is a CHOICE.
There are times we make “choices” like you and Terry did with feeding the squirrels because we DON’T KNOW what the consequences will be in hand feeding wild animals (even squirrels) and those choices are UNWISE choices but are from lack of knowledge, not like the guy who goes into the bank with a gun to demand money, because HE KNOWS DAMN WELL IT IS WRONG TO ROB A BANK, BUT CHOOSES TO DO IT ANYWAY.
So sometimes we, in our lack of knowledge about psychopaths, make the “choice” to forgive someone’s lie, or dishonesty and to continue to TRUST them not to do it again in the future. By the time we realize that our CHOICE to overlook this behavior was a MISTAKE, we may be badly damaged.
What about dolphins? Are they tame and safe to train? They seem like the pets of the sea, but they are dangerous sometimes, and unpredictable. So are dogs, though. I know, random dolphin comment, but I’m curious. ^_^
Changed: That is the most quotable comment ever! I’m going to say that when somebody talks about squirrels next time.
Annie and Ox Drover: I agree with you both. Great posts!
Donna: This was a very good example. Not too long ago we invited my sociopath to dinner. He ate and left, nothing too bad. Then he started inviting himself to meals. He kept coming back to eat whenever he wanted to. Then he started coming over to do anything, without calling, and without being invited. He finally started to walk around OUR house like he owned the place. 🙁 He was just like this squirrel. Felt like he deserved everything and took it, after our kindness.