During a recent email thread, a friend and I were comparing our local squirrels. She put forth that her Chicago squirrels did not eat popcorn, to which I expressed my disbelief. I couldn’t imagine a squirrel turning their nose up at it. I said I would have to test that theory.
I’ll be curious whether yours will eat it. Maybe the consistency of popcorn is too close to foam packaging peanuts, and my squirrels know not to eat foam peanuts based on prior unfortunate digestive disturbances? Dunno…
Maybe that hippie organic crap stuff you try to pass off as popcorn is the problem I say! Give them good old-fashioned regular popcorn and see what happens. I did! First, start with some plain old microwave popcorn:
Ensure it is nuked properly, and not burned:
Leave some out with the usual offering of almonds and townhouse mini-club crackers before bed:
The verdict? My squirrels are not food snobs. All three foods demolished by 9AM. Victory!
(I called this a Thesis because said friend is an academic, and figured it would resonate better.)
5 responses to “The Popcorn Thesis”
Are you sure it wasn’t birds that ate the popcorn?
99.5% sure. Several years back, one crow figured out that food appeared on the balcony every day and would hang out. Year before that when I put bird seed out, had a few small birds that showed up. But in the last couple of years, I haven’t seen any birds near the balcony. We don’t have pigeons in the alley behind the place like some buildings either, and pigeons don’t lurk in the parking lot behind my place like they do two blocks over.
Squirrels are cute. I am glad some people try to take care of them.
Hey I’m tryna get squirrels 2 feed out my hand but they are looking at me is that a good sign or bad sign
It can take quite a while for a wild squirrel to trust a human. It will depend on how wild they are, how much contact they have had with other humans, how calm you are, and just their basic nature. Some squirrels may never trust a human. =)