Squirrel Appreciation Day

Journalist Rocky the Squirrel here –

“Keeping my paws on the nuts of the world!”

Today, January 21st, is a great and wonderful day my fellow friends.  It is Squirrel Appreciation Day.  I can tell you – today is *my* day.  Today, you should appreciate us tree climbing, entertaining, nut gathering neighborhood squirrels.  Being a squirrel can be hard.  Some of us give others a bad name.  They are the ones that eat food out of the feeders, eat some veggies in your gardens and chase/tease your pooches.  Then there are squirrels like me who are highly educated, have families to take care of and bring your enjoyment and education.  Focus on us great squirrels for the day.  Heck, give us some nuts, a little hand out, or wave at us from time to time.

In case you were wondering: Squirrel Appreciation Day was created by wildlife rehabilitator Christy Hargrove of Asheville, North Carolina

There are more than 300 species of squirrel. Different types of squirrels range in size from five inches (the African pygmy squirrel) to three feet (Indian giant squirrel). The word “squirrel” comes from the Greek word skiouros, which means shadow-tailed.

When hiding its food, a squirrel goes through an elaborate process of masking the location by pretending to bury the item a few times before settling on a final spot. While red squirrels are known for vigorously defending their territories, some females turn over all or part of their holdings, including a critical food cache, to their offspring as a way of bolstering the pups’ chances of survival during the difficult first year of life.

So upon this holiday, please reflect a few minutes on us and throw us some extra feed.

Thank you very much. This public announcement had been brought to you by Journalist Rocky the Squirrel. Thank you for your time.

 

Rocky’s Nut Brunch

Have you ever heard of Robert “Bob” Geary?  Chances are, you haven’t.  Geary was a police officer in San Francisco, California in the 80’s/90’s.  In the early 90’s, he was assigned to North Beach where officers were meant to be highly visible and to come up with creative ways to earn the trust of the citizens living in the area.  Geary had a master’s degree in education and and undergraduate degree in art.  He thought hard about how he could perform his job and have fun.  He decided he would buy an expensive wooden dummy and teach himself by audiotape of how to use the dummy in his job.

He chose the name of his dummy as Officer Brendan O’Smarty.  Kind of a play on words with O’Smarty being a dummy and Brendan as a first name to give him a little dignity.  Geary even went a little further with O’Smarty by dressing him up in a patrol uniform with a hat and water pistol.  And don’t worry, O’Smarty had a badge number too – it  was 1/2 – LOL

In 1993, the entire city of San Francisco voted about whether a police officer was allowed to carry a ventriloquist’s dummy called Brendan O’Smarty while on patrol. He was voted in by a narrow percentage of 51% for and 49% against.   Geary and O’Smarty protected the streets of San Francisco all the way up until his retirement in 1998.

 

Information/Picture off of Getty Images and Wikipedia