Big John wrote:
Dudley

I have a flock (note OT word) of Squirrels that are part of the Zoo
(including lots of different birds) I feed on my patio. I put their
food out and ring their dinner bell and by the time I'm in the house
looking out window, there they all are stuffing themselves.

Since you trained your Squirrel to eat out of your hand, please pass
that training info along to us poor guys that also can't fly no more
)

New subject.

Have you read the small book by Cmdr Moore (Navy) called The Wrong
Stuff? If you haven't, when I get back from my plane wan-ta bees here,
could ship to you to read. Kind of interesting and know you would
enjoy if you haven't read.

Big John

************************************************** ***********

On Sat, 29 Sep 2007 14:13:16 -0400, Dudley Henriques
wrote:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:
Dudley Henriques wrote in
:

Bertie the Bunyip wrote:

Anyhow, just thinking about doing spins is giving me a headache these
days!


Bertie

Me as well. My flying days are behind me. I'm still quite active as a
consultant in the airshow safety community and that keeps me
busy....that and YARD WORK !!!!
:-)


Ugh. Yard work.

Bertie
Horrible stuff, yard work! And there are other things too that make
retirement a royal bitch. Take that damn squirrel of mine...yes I have a
pet squirrel :-)) Little bugger started coming up onto the back deck and
me like an idiot decided that he was so cute I should start training him
to eat out of my hand.
Out comes my wife and promptly tells me,
"Hon, PLEASE don't feed the squirrels. They'll end up coming around and
eating all my flowers".

"Hell" says me, why would they eat your flowers when I'm giving them all
this good stuff?"

"PLEASE", she says; don't do it! They'll eat the flowers".

Well, this morning guess what happened?

God, I wish I was flying again!!!!
:-)))



Hi John;

About feeding the squirrel; It took a great deal of patience and so far
only a few have responded. What I do is take a small piece of bread and
speak slowly and in a very gentle voice to the squirrel; sort of like
you would do with a cat. The objective is to be totally non threatening
so I hold out the bread in my fingers and I don't move either my hand or
my body at all.
I let the animal make it's own advance toward my hand as I speak to it
gently.
I find that the squirrel will respond VERY tentatively and cautiously.
It advances slowly and sometimes retreats back a bit then comes in closer.
Finally, it will come up to my extended hand and VERY gently...and I
mean GENTLY, take the bread from my fingers. There is absolutely no
tendency to bite and absolutely no aggression is present.
He used to take the bread and back up to the porch rail and eat it, but
I'm astounded that as he has gained confidence in my intention to do him
no harm, he has taken the bread and sat right there next to me eating it.
I understand that wild animals are unpredictable and can suddenly turn
on you, but for some reason I honestly believe that they can sense
kindness and non aggression and they respond in kind.
Sorry for the long story. Must be the old test pilot in me wanting to
get all the data points out ok :-)
Anyway, you get the picture. I wish you luck with your squirrel
"relationships"

I appreciate the offer of the book, but I find I don't read much for
pleasure any more as it's hard for me to focus properly on printed pages
for extended periods of time. It's the floaters in my left eye. They
drive me nuts trying to read.
I do manage the reports and official stuff that I absolutely have to
take care of, but even that is getting harder to do.
Hope the squirrel lesson gets you some results. :-))
D


--
Dudley Henriques