Dudley Henriques wrote:

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.

Getting them to sense food is a major accomplishment.

I think the reputation comes from (among how many other possible
reasons) the fact that wild animals have to react very quickly in
their normal environment where they have little time to consider
responses. Also, they are used to dealing with their own, not us
relatively clumsy human beings.