Our elusive rock squirrels

We first started seeing them a couple years ago. They're easily frightened, unlike the really common gray squirrels who hop all over the yard. When I drive up, the arrogant gray ones just sit there and look at me without flinching. But the black rock squirrels hightail it into the nearest tree for cover.

You have to look very closely in the above pics to spy one of the black rock squirrels that live in our yard. It's like our own rodent version of Bigfoot! There are several oaks trees with hollowed out spots in them, and that's where they typically scramble to disappear from sight. Any time I drive up and they're in the yard, they sprint to a hiding place. Many of them appear to be a bit larger than the gray squirrels in our yard that love to taunt the dogs. 

This is the first time I've been fast enough to get even a far off, blurry pic of these critters. One day I was chatting over the fence with our neighbor about the squirrels getting into our attic and he seemed to think the rock squirrels are more destructive than their gray cousins. At this point, I don't want any of those suckers to get back up there, waltzing through the attic and driving us nuts. It seems our last follow-up visit from the critter evictors finally got all of the squirrel entrance spots closed up in this house. 

Back in the day my Pawpaw loved to hunt squirrels and would bring home a gunny sack full of them to Granny, who would fry them up or make squirrel dumplings. I can remember sitting outside while he prepped them for cooking. It's kinda gruesome to consider since I was probably seven at the time, but we were country kids and didn't bat an eye. He'd cut off the tails and let us play with them. Ah yes, the good old pre-PC days. I can only imagine how that would go down on social media if I put up a video of my husband skinning a squirrel or me twirling a handful of their lopped off bushy tails.

I hope we have that same critter-free luck at the lake house with the ring tailed cats. They were chewing on the AC wires this spring and shorted out the upstairs unit to the tune of over a thousand bucks. It will be time to go all redneck on them and break out the rat traps as well as BB guns if they dare to wreak more havoc on the HVAC systems in either home.