That’s my PSA for August….
“But the
Squirrels are so entertaining! I want to feed them. What should I feed them?”
Spoiler alert: it’s NOT the nonnative, non-sweet field corn.
Cuz I can tell you. The squirrels aren’t eating. Squirrels cannot digest cellulose. They’re taking the corn you leave out for them and planting the kernels all over my garden in hopes those grow into something yummier and more digestible.
At first I thought it was cute.
And then it became super interesting witnessing how squirrel spatial spaced their caches so as to find them again in winter. . .
But as more and more baby corn plants keep emerging all summer long, I become discouraged.
Corn, a warm season annual, has no hope of reaching maturity before Colorado’s winter’s cold freezes them all cold stone dead, with no hope of even regenerating rewards.
Wouldn’t you be a bit upset if after squirreling up your retirement savings, perhaps even expecting interest, only to find out upon retirement there’s nothing left in your stash?
Haven’t you ever felt sorry for the hamster running and running the hamster wheel cuz it must run.
The squirrel that constantly jumps, hops about, digging, covering or re-covering caches of nuts, berries, seeds, cuz it must? Its cache may still be there when hungry in the middle of winter the squirrel goes again over all the places he’s dug before. Or, missed long enough, have since grown into a tree, shrub, or plant— generating yet more nuts, berries, and seeds.
But put out nonnative food stuff that clashes within our environment, the caches won’t yield nor regenerate.
Native food can be nutritious to our wildlife, to us, AND work with our climate.
Putting out field corn isn’t the answer. Whoever you are, please stop sending squirrels on quixotic tasks; let them jump and dig about, and to actually have food in the winter.
Meanwhile I’m pulling out these useless corn stalks, thinking, what was the point, real-ly. And I’m not recommending peanuts either.