It’s January, When Squirrels Chase Down Love’s First Blush

By Curtiss Clark

The archeology of our brush pile recounts yard work and garden projects that stretch back six years to when we bought our place. We’ve been thinking about getting someone with a wood chipper to come around this spring to give us a fresh start and to leave us with a carpet of mulch beneath a stand of spruce trees where some new undergrowth is taking hold in the thick bed of needles there.

Landscaping projects last summer gave the pile new prominence under the spruces. It has risen into view from behind a stonewall on buttresses of pruned rhododendron branches, fallen tree limbs, and rotted fence rails. And now its crowing glory is this year’s Christmas tree with its entourage of wreaths.

It’s an unsightly mess, but we are reluctant to clean it up because it happens to be the most valuable part of our property to the community of critters who share our address. It is riddled with the passageways and redoubts of mice, chipmunks, squirrels, and even a few transient opossums and skunks. It is safe haven for the lower links in the food chain seeking refuge from hawks, owls, and coyotes. And it is well stocked.

Kate and I routinely toss in choice bits of fruit and nuts on our way to the compost bin, and as I have mentioned before, the pile is packed with stores of pinecones, put there at summer’s end by enterprising and elusive red squirrels anticipating a long winter.

It is mid-January and we are still waiting for the long winter to arrive. It appears to have been waylaid in the Rockies this year, leaving the January thaw with nothing to do and the groundhog facing a quandary over shadow interpretation. The complete lack of snow cover as we head into the heart of midwinter makes it appear that all of Nature is a bit confused — all of Nature, that is, except for the gray squirrels.

Every year, snow or no snow, the gray squirrels are first heralds of Valentine’s Day; their mating season is now in full swing. It may look like total confusion, but they know exactly what they are doing. They are stirring up the settled order of the brush pile and every other corner of the yard, for that matter. When the female squirrels emerge in estrous from their leafy nests, or dreys, in mid-January, all the desultory seed snacking by listless males at the bird feeders comes quickly to an end and we cut to the chase — literally.

Gray squirrel mating chases are pure slapstick with males chasing the females, who always seem to manage amazing narrow escapes through sheer cunning and astonishing agility. The hesitations, head-fakes, zigs and zags that serve them so well in this mating ritual are the same moves that prove so lethal to them on the roadways. They just can’t figure out cars, which travel swiftly in a straight line, unlike predators and determined suitors.

Usually there are just one or two males in the chase, but there have been reports of up to ten chasing a single female. The love-struck lotharios lag behind her in a chattering testosterone-laden, tail-flicking scramble of gray fur. They get the ultimate run-around, circling the trunks of trees in a mad dash. It’s a wonder they can keep track of whose tail there are chasing.

The female leads the suitors on by marking branches with her scent. She may appear to be a reluctant mate, but she wants to ensure that they will always know where to find her.

It is believed that the females play hard to get to encourage vigorous competition between males. The more competition there is, the better her chances of mating with the strongest male. It’s betrothal of the fittest.

This crazed courtship is all over well before Valentine’s Day. After slowing enough to let her leading man claim his prize, the female squirrel returns to her drey (no boys allowed) where she will give birth 44 days later.

The dreys, wedged in the forks of high branches, look unkempt from the outside, with leaves and twigs jutting every which way in its flimsy design. But inside the many insulating layers of leaves is a secure and cozy lair lined with shredded bark, grass, and even moss or feathers.

Baby squirrels are about the size of a peanut when they are born. They are hairless and virtually blind and must spend near two months in the drey, totally dependent on their mother in that time. They are one of two litters that will be born in a year. The other comes in the fall, and it is not uncommon for young squirrels to still be in the nest during and after January’s courtship. They are forced out by February, however, to make way for the new arrivals.

Despite their name, gray squirrels come in a variety of colors, mostly shades of gray and brown. The black squirrels seen commonly in the neighborhoods around the Paugussett Forest are also gray squirrels. Occasionally one is even spotted in a spectacular white coat.

While our brush pile would look a lot better under its own white coat of snow, we’re not giving up on it. We will continue to make offerings to the various creatures that use it for their winter purposes now that the madcap mating squirrels have shown us that their season is proceeding like clockwork — at least at the biological level. Besides, we’ve got better things to think about. Valentine’s Day is less than a month away, and already romance is in the air.