Sciuridology (SQUIRRELS) with Karen Munroe

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Oh hey, it's your neighbor with the smelly trash cans. What's in there? Ali Ward, I am going to make this intro as short as possible because I've squirrels on my pants. I want to start this first things first, I wanted to interview this person for years. Somehow my emails never got returned, my dreams never materialized, and then one day I realized she followed me on social media.

My name is Karen Monroe, and now you she her pronouns.

My god, it's you it's really you, It's really me.

I promise it's me.

Literally, so many people in my life know today is a really exciting one for me. No chill, zero chill, whatsoever. And that is the correct way to be when talking to doctor Karen Monroe. By the way, do you know that scouriology? Do you know that? Have you ever heard the term?

No, I've always referred to myself as a mammalogist.

You're very good at squirrels, though, yes, And I just want you to know that out there in just the miasma of life and words, a scurtiologist is a term for someone who is very good at squirrels. I know this term.

I believe you as I say. I've studied squirrels for a very long time, longer than I've been married. I mean since I was my freshman year in college, so since I was seventeen, I've studied squirrels. But I still to this day have active squirrel research because people are just fascinated by it.

We love squirrels, but we're scared of most other rodents.

Right. Why is that? It's the fluffy tail, isn't it.

It's got to be. I mean, that's where they get their name from even right, I read the right.

Shade tail, shade tail.

Wait a second, Wait a second, Their tail is for shade partially.

Sure, it's all kinds of thermal regulations, so you know, you can think of it as an umbrella if it's just kind of misting raining, but yeah, cover yourself in sun or you know, when they splat, right, so when they lay flat, they try to thrmw A regulate. You know, it's a wait for them to give off heat, pick up heat, however, you'd.

Like more unbody heat in a bit. But we have a whole ding dang episode on thermophysiology and body temperature regulation as well as a kid friendly somologies episode on It was doctor Shane Campbell Stayton. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I got to.

Admit I wanted to talk about squirrels for a long time, but I don't think I've ever talked about the function of a squirrel tail. And of course they have a function. They wouldn't have evolved to have it otherwise, right.

And then like when you watch them jump and fall and stuff like that, they also use it to totally right themselves so that they land, you know, on all fours.

That makes so much sense. Is it kind of like when you see a tightrope walker that has one of those really big poles.

Yeah, absolutely, they kind of like, well, I don't know about pole, but yeah, Like at the Yankees game last day, probably ten people sent me this clip. There was a squirrel in the outfield and the fans were, you know, shocked by this. It's like running across and then it falls and it falls eight feet onto the ground.

Now has it become a flying squirrel?

Oh?

This is not good. He sticks to landing much better than we would.

I'll tell you that.

Like y off to the races.

And you just watch it and it kind of goes side to side to side, and like you can watch the tail kind of work as a rudder and then it lands just fine and runs away.

Is there any part of that that also is just like a parachute to slow it down?

About a parachute, I mean I think more like flying squirrels, right, like the gliding with that membrane really kind of is better to catch the mayor. But gray squirrels, which this was just a gray squirrel, they kind of use it more kind of as a rudder side to side.

Oh boy, howdy. We will address different kinds of squirrels, gray fox, giant dwarf, flying marvel. But first let's talk about the specimen. Karen Monroe. I got to ask, how did you get? So I'm gonna say lucky that somehow life just shot doctor Karen Monroe down a path from the age of seventeen where she gets to study the most beloved woodland creature.

There is the perfect confluence of luck and mistakes, I guess. So when I was in high school, right, my high school guys, so it was like, oh, you know, like biology, you should become a vet or a doctor. Right, that was pretty much the two career paths. And there was no way I could ever tell somebody they had to put their pet down. That was not even an option for me. So I was like, well, I'll be a doctor. I I like people and I really liked kids, and

Climate differences even.

Yeah, climate, cultural, everything and anything you could possibly imagine what I really figured out and Arizona was that there were even less opportunities as a lonely undergraduate to get involved in research and really kind of figure out what it is I want to do.

So Karen was majoring in cellular and molecular biology but couldn't seem to get lab experience in Arizona, so hungry for research, she would spend summers and spring breaks not getting crunk on four logos in Miami Beach, but had back to her small town to work on squirrels.

And so I kind of did a huge one to eighty. So my undergrad degree is in cellular and molecular biology, and I went to Purdue and eventually ended up leaving there with my master's in ecology and evolutionary biology. But it meant I had to take all of those classes ecology, evolution and weal behavior, advanced mammology, all those kinds of

Are squirrels in trouble? It seems they're everywhere. Maybe one tried to even steal your croissant yesterday. They seem like they're doing fine to some of us. But we will get into how different species are doing later in the episode. But yes, her interests and experience all converged to make her a truly lauded securadiologist. It sounds like one was that peanut butter and the other was the bread, and you're like, oh, I guess I get make a sandwich.

You've got my chocolate, my peanut butter.

So when it comes to your work, was there anything about the field work that you were drawn to or was it more systemic that you liked?

No, it was much more systemic. I mean I really enjoyed the fact that I could walk and I do this now right, I walk outside and my study organism is right there. It's not like I need, you know, to get on a plane and fly three thousand miles with all this equipment and things like that. It's right there, which means it's successible and I can talk about it to the public, and I can talk about it to

I gotta say, anyone who's listening to this who's like working on permacross stuff probably like, right, you were frequent fire miles. But still, the availability of squirrels, that's why we love them.

That's what it is. And everybody knows them, and everybody loves them, and everybody, everybody, everybody has a squirrel story. Yes, you know, I go to dinners that have you know, corporate people and business people and whatnot. They're like, oh, a scientist, We're not gonna able to talk to you. And I'm like, I bet you are. I bet you, I bet you will. By the end of the night, you and I would be friends. And we love shared stories.

Surely there are attention gathering no matter who you are, though, But where do squirrels live? Speaking of tundra and perma frost? What continents? Or rather, I guess where don't squirrels live?

I think an articaus the only place squirrels do not live. Wow, you know from the Arctic circle down into the tropics, and you know from east to west across the way.

So if you are on a continent, squirrels are native to it, except Australia, where American gray squirrels were introduced to Melbourne in the late eighteen hundreds and then a few days later a scurry of northern palm squirrels busted out of the Zoo and Perth and honestly, it's all over the place. How many there still are out there? Oh and squirrels are also not native to Antarctica. In case you're listening there, and I am impressed that you are and that you have Wi FI and I hope

I mean, they're just so charismatic, right, Like they have the little pointy noses in the face, and you know, the hands and so you can sit there and watch them rotate the acorn in their hand and get it just right so they can take the perfect bite. They're not intimidating, right, even when they make noises and things

From an evolutionary standpoint, What do you think has helped them survive on prairies and mountains and in the cold and in jungles.

You know.

I want to say that they're such generalists, kind of across the board, that they're willing to be just about anything, but that is not always true, because there are definitely cases where they really do specifically eat, you know, a very small number of plants. Things like that. I think of like ground squirrels really specialize in a plant type and their whole physiology and when they come out of hibernation or torpor really is tied to that specific plant

No, wait, they have better meal planting than I do. Right, that's hurt so bad, And I'm really impressed.

Right, I mean I've seen I have a you know, a squirl my neighborhood has taken you know, a chunk of a Halloween pumpkin and put it up in the tree to dry, and I'm sure it stored it away for winter.

How many of our trees are because of forgetful squirrels?

Almost all of them. I know for my undergraduate research that if a acorn is handled by a squirrel, even if it is half eaten by the squirrel, it will germinate better than an acorn that it's not been touched at all by a squirrel.

So we owe so much carbon capture to squirrels.

I mean they really are like the gardener of the planet half eaten.

Really, Yeah, just saunter over to the nineteen ninety three paper Tannins and partial consumption of acorns implications for dispersal of oaks by seed predators, and you can get a little fat snack like germination experiments revealed equal or greater germination frequencies for partially consumed acorns than for the intact acorns, and they say, we suggest that the higher tannin levels may render the apical portion less palatable and thereby increase

It's part of my under project. We tagged thousands of acorns and put them out in the forest little brad nails, and then walked for hours with a mel detector trying to recover acorns to see how far squirrels were actually dispersing them. And it's quite a distance. And they they are so smart. They know acorns that are infested with weevils or other insects that are not going to make it through the winter, and they will either eat them

So, yes, squirrels do not have a one hundred percent recovery rate with their food, all right, and they don't pretend to. It can range from twenty five to ninety five percent recovery rate depending on the species and area and food. But a ton of research has shown that squirrels have excellent spatial memory and they know to head back to their cash, But if they smell a neighbor's food buried on the way, they might eat that too. Also, according to the nineteen eighty six paper Gray Squirrel Food

You know, they only eat an acorn based on how much other food is available, because the plant's smart and puts tannins into the acorn, and as it gets closer to the cattle, lead and it puts more tannin, so it tastes more bitter, if that's possible. If you've ever eaten an acorn, it is incredibly bitter. But the constation of tannins increases as you get towards cuttle leed, and so they will just eat the top half of the

For more on eating acorns as humans, you can listen to the Indigenous Colonology episode, which I will link in the show notes, is a great one. I'm so curious what a squirrel's yearly planner looks like. When are they sleeping, when are they up, when are they getting it on? What's their year look like at a glance.

So if I kind of take a traditional gray squirrel north a record squirrel, so in the winter time, they're mainly active in the middle of the day, and that's when they're relying on most of their storage foods and things like that typically once you know, you start to get warmed up. I will say February, although the climate change is getting earlier and earlier, and I've actually seen

Like that innercmbium side note is part of a tree. It's specifically the sugary, really nutrient heavy layer of new growth. It's just below the bark. And we talk all about it in the Dendrology two parter with KCJ. Clap. But yes, some squirrels, thanks in part to climate change, are having steamy, romantic Hallmark holidays and canoodling in December, but usually they hold off until around Valentine's Day, when spring is spring, the days grow longer and the world grows ever hornier.

Once young are out, usually it's springtime and food's abundant and available, and if the squirrels are in good enough body condition, they can reproduce again. So in a few weeks later, they'll kind of go through that whole process again. Most squirrels will not reproduce until they're about a year old, and so we can kind of classify typically sub adults are you know, juveniles you less than six months, and then subadults and then once they mate, we usually refer

Really, I love that. I love a co op.

So if it's really cold out, why not get up with a bunch of your friends and all cozy and together and you know, save some body heat.

It's like huga, It's like that Caandinavian concept of just like.

Just snuggle down. And we know that different species they do it slightly differently. So in gray squirrels, they tend to be matrilineal, and so females attend to have some kind of related this will tend to nest together and there could be like little bachelor groups as well, kind of help save some of that body heat and whatnot. And they'll move from nest to nest from night to night. It's not like one nest, one squirrel, So they are kind of communal. They'll move from, you know, group to group.

So no squirrels aren't setting up bring cameras and calling the cops if someone naps on their couch. And if you need a visual. Their dreys are like twigs on the outside forra structure, and then they're stuffed with a leafy lining for installation, and then there's like a little inner mattress of moss and fur. So when you see a clot of leaves in a denuded tree in winter, just think there might be a snoozing squirrel burpen up

I mean you just kind of wove it in together, and there you can usually tell it's a squirrel nests and a bird nest from the doming on the top. Okay, So like when you look at bird nests, most of them are kind of flat and then you know, curved on the bottom. But drays have a shelter top, so they are kind of curved on the top, especially when they're being used a lot. As they become less used, they will sink down a little bit. But yeah, those big clumpy leafy pieces are squirreled rays.

So a nest shaped like a bowl and for birds and a dray for squirrels is more like a bubble or a dome. And no, you didn't ask. But the study of nests is called nidology, and not two hours from me is the world's best museum of nests. It's called the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology. It's in came Rio and it's home to more than eighteen thousand nest specimens. I want to go there so bad. But back to treeholes, and.

They absolutely will use cavities too in trees, So like, a cavity is definitely prime location in real estate, particular if you're going to raise young, right, So like, if you want more protection from not only the outside sources, but predators as well, the cavities are the preferred location to raise young. But then you know there are issues with things like mites and fleas and things like that, and so squirrels do kind of move between nest sites.

And let's say that you love a squirrel, you love all squirrels, and you would like to offer them a home in your yard. My dad and I shared a love of squirrels, and my dad built several squirrel condominiums and just hoped that someone would take up residents. I think you put a for rent sign on one. So is there a protocol? Is there a good way to attract a squirrel or say, squirrels, please, I would like to be your friends.

I mean, certainly there are squirrel nest boxes that you could build and put out, and I've seen squirrels use nest boxes. But I think it kind of depends on where you are and what kind of scroll you want to attract, Like where you are ground squirrels probably have more ground nests than they do nests kind of up in the trees and things like that. But for those people who are in the Midwest and the East coast having oak trees, having edge of forests, gray squirrels really

So these are the ones with a grayish brown fur, but they have rusty reddish coloring on their faces and paws and tails. And when I leave peanuts out for the crows, the fox squirrels come by and say thank you very much, and they probably pretend to hide it if they think that I'm watching.

Which are easily twenty percent, if not fifty percent larger than gray squirrels. They really like a much more open park like place, and so they don't want lots of overlapping trees. They really want to come down on the ground and do their eating and whatnot down on the ground. And so it kind of depends on where you live and what kind of squirrels you really want to attract.

I have to ask as a speridiologist, have you ever gotten in a fistfight with burders?

So usually I mean, I've been asked to come and speak to all kinds of auto bond societies and the bird or groups and whatnot, and usually one of the first questions they want to ask me is how do I keep squirrels out of my birds? And so I do address this. I usually start off I was like, Okay, let's just you know, let's talk about the elephant in the room first.

The first thing you do, you break a bottle on the side of a table. Listen.

But I talk about how cool squirrels are to watch, you know, and we talk about a lot of their behaviors. When I go and talk in public about squirrels and what it is I do and why it's important, one of the first things I try to bring up is that it's really only here kind of in the US, that we think of squirrels as like pests and a

Eighty percent of squirrels are in decline. Okay, So the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species lists the Nemdapha flying squirrel, which is globally critically endangered. It's currently described by one known specimen that was collected in northeast India in nineteen eighty one. It's the sasquatch of squirrels. People think they see it sometimes, but they're usually confused and looking at a red giant flying squirrel.

Really, one of my favorite places to talk about squirrels is Japan, and really the only places you find squirrels anymore in Japan are the really old sacred shrines, because that's the only places left that have enough large old growth trees to support a population of squirrels.

My gosh, just thinking about they're getting shrunken and shrunken. I didn't realize that they were so threatened. I would always think they must be a species of least concern because they're so visible, and that's so fascinating. And I'm also wondering how many kinds of squirrels are there, and what's the difference between a ground squirrel, a tree squirrel, a flying squirrel. Where's chipmunks in this mix? Who are they?

Etrepents are cousins. They're a cute cousin. We keep them in along with the groundhogs and okay, other marmots and things like that. I believe I had to look this up actually because I wanted to make sure I gave you the correct number, because I believe two weeks ago whatever, there was a publication about a new species of squirrel found. So I believe we're up to two hundred and eighty nine species of squirrels worldwide, fewer.

Than I thought to be honest, right around three hundred species from ones that glide where zip lines wish they could go to ground dwelling tunnel cuties that I want to kiss, but I won't.

It really comes down to where they're used to nesting. What do they prefer, You know, tree squirrels versus ground squirrels. Flag squirrels are definitely a different grouping a lot of physiological differences or anatomical at least differences there. But I mean tree squirrels, I think they're usually what's people picture when they think about a squirrel with the fluffy tail

So to recap the family securited eye is in the order Rodentia, and it involves squirrels and chipmunks and even marmots and prairie dogs. But there is a smaller genus of just squirrels. But in general, all of these squirrels we're talking about may live in trees or the ground or have wildly different diets and lives, living up to ten years in the wild or twenty in captivity. Imagine a squirrel that could legally get a driver's license, but

And so for my dissertation, I study the species of squirrels called the round tailed ground squirrel. It does not have a roundtail. I don't know why it's called that.

You didn't name it.

I didn't name it. It looks like a little baby prairie dog and has kind of a long, thin tail, and they live in the ground in the desert, and so we really wanted to know how social these squirrels were. They were once thought to be this great model outlier in that the literature and all of the models say they should be very solitary and alone. But the two papers that were published in the mid seventies said, no, they are highly social. They're like prairie dogs. They formed

I guess they like their privacy.

I suppose we saw evidence mating. We saw coppleatory plugs and things like that, but never an actual meeting copulatory plug. Copulatory plugs really, yes, So coplatory plugs are this prettius gelatin piece that males will deposit in the female reproductive tract to try and stop her from meeting with any other males.

Well, that's the divs.

And lots of squirrels have this. Lots of mammals have these, and in most of the time, in just about all the squirrels I've studied, females will just take them out and made again.

Oh, this drama continues, literal cock blocking, actual cocklocking going on in squirrel romance. But before you go around flipping the bird to insecure male squirrels, please know that copulatory plugs are also common in some primate species bees, kangaroos, reptiles, rats, rodents, mice, scorpions, spiders. But back to squirrels. We're talking about squirrels, So ground squirrels might keep this jiz tamp on in for almost

It's kind of this weird corkscrew kind of shape, futerous and so round tailed ground squirrels. I had a litter of thirteen squirrels for one of my females. I would say the average was usually three to four, and in eastern gray squirrels the average litter size is between two and three. But absolutely those squirrels can be sired from different males.

Okay, so usually just a few baby squirrels or kits. Sometimes they're called kittens unless you have thirteen at a time. And perhaps that squirrel mom is related to my Catholic grandmother who had eleven children by the age of thirty and stark white hair. But let's get off the topic of my deceased and beloved Catholic grandmother and talk about group sex in your backyard.

We know that females will mate multiply. Female gray sqirls will mate multiply. They're only an estress for eight hours, so they're only receptive to mating for eight hours. And in that eight hours, I believe the published number is twenty four males. She will meete with up to twenty four males in that eight hours.

Oh get it?

Girl?

Is that eight hours a day or a year.

A mating season maybe twice a year?

Wow? So she goes fast and hard yep. And then is there any paternal care or are they just like I don't even remember, there's so much it was an orgy.

Nope, Nope, just there and gone.

See it never And if they can reproduce like more than once a year, do they tend to give a lot of resources to their young or is it kind of like we just kind of make as many as we can and then you know, we wish.

Them well, I mean, and we know that lactation is incredibly expensive. And they tend to stay in the nest for probably six eight weeks with mom after that, and then you can actually watch them. It's one of my favorite behaviors to watches. You'll watch the juveniles come out of the nest and kind of play, and then you will see the female you'll see mom come out and basically just yell at them and chase them off, and then they'll come back and at the end of the

What about rat kings in squirrel nests. I've seen SAPs that canclude their tail together. It makes me want to throw myself in the ocean. I can't. It's the saddest, cutest, most terrible thing I've ever seen. Yeah, okay, I explain that partly, but sometimes squirrel tales will get glued together by tree sap. And we discussed this notion of a rat king in the Urban Rodentology episode with doctor Bobby Corrigan.

I get people all the time who call me with baby squirrels who have fallen out of nessa and things like that, and that is that is not my jam in any way, shup perform. I have several well lifereehabbers on call, and so I send them to places much

What about redenticide? Is that a threat since some of them are generalists.

Absolutely? Yeah. I've definitely worked in places that it's one of the main ways that they will control squirrels, particularly ground squirrels, when they don't want them in a place. Mm.

I mean, I feel like gophers are like everyone has a gopher. The culturally it's people are quite unfair to go first, right, But two ground squirrels cause that kind of damage to like lawns and sports fields and stuff like that.

They can, Yeah, I certainly can.

And now a once in a lifetime chance to ask a personal burning question. I cannot believe that I have the opportunity to ask a ground squirrel expert about some hazing that I got from a squirrel. Okay, can I play you a noise and can you tell me what's going on?

Sure?

Okay, I was having a bad day last week, you know me I get personal here. I was bummed, and my husband's like, let's go to the park and let's walk around. And I was like, that's a good idea. We did, and then this squirrel started yelling at us.

This might hurt my heart what you have to tell me, But that's okay.

He little guys, poor girl is hanging out just a bush, maybe five feet away from us.

Call you a predator, Well, California ground squirrel probably is young down in the burrow, and so it's just kind of that warning.

We're such dipshits here. We were standing there longer because we're like, does she need help? Like is she the lassie of a squirrel family? Like we were like what do we do? And then the whole time she was like away, I hate you, But I mean there's a reason why dog speaky toys sound like that right right exactly.

And and really if you did not know right where she was, it would have been hard for you to locate it. It's a single tonal whistle. It's really hard from a million predator to echo locate that and figure out exactly where that is.

Oh so she probably had some cute little bit is that we're underground not far from us. Yes, And if you've ever heard chirping or barking coming from a squirrel, there are correct terms. I just learned that scour idiologists have words for those like barking, like clicking Donald duck calls.

I was like, that's awesome.

I mean they were everywhere, and this was a couple of weeks ago, so this was like late spring. Would there be a reason why they were out so much or do you think it's just a really good place for ground squirrels because the oak trees.

Now I think it's probably just a great place for ground.

Squirrel it's just a party. Oh that's exciting.

I know. When I started to study Aroundteil ground squrels, I was trying to find a population that would be good to study, and I was having a hard time kind of really locating a good dense population. And I actually went to some snake researchers and I was like, could you look at your records and tell me, like where you have good populations? And they came through. I mean, this is you know, perfect confluence.

Oh, no, one tell the snakes because like they're gonna blow up this restaurant.

But the squirrels, you know, they have a relationship with the snakes as well, Like it's not like every time the snakes heeds the squirrel, the snake gets the squirrel. The squirrels fight the snakes. Right off, I saw a pregnant female totally chase off a rattlesnake. You know, you could tell from the roundness of her belly that she was pregnant and kind of the sneak was just coming through, and she started on high alert and let everybody know.

Okay, So I'm learning squirrels are cute and beautiful and they also.

Will talk shit. Oh they're badasses.

Yeah, and they'll cut you.

We know that they have some resistance to some venoms and possibly even some rattlesnake venoms. We don't know quite how much, but certainly they have some resistance.

In all of your work, have you ever been bit by a squirrel?

I have never been bit by a squirrel.

Oh, I'm knocking on so much wood.

I have come close once and gotten a blood blister from kind of getting squished. But when we handle them, I use a cloth handling that's in the shape of a triangle. I actually usually describe it as a giant pastry bag. So if you imagine a giant pastry bag made out of like a dena material. We wrap the wide end around the trap opening because it's really easy to catch a squirrel, peanut, butter, sunflower seeds, things like that. But then you have a very angry squirrel in a

Yeah, of course, I look this up and I found fieldwork photos of doctor Monroe on a campus lawn in her lap a pillowcase sized dark blue canvas, Sack pointed one end. She is wearing a school bus yellow T shirt and it matches the shirts of her student assistance. And there's a small logo over the breast and official seal of some sort. But on the back of the shirts, in bold lettering, it reads, it's the squirrels. They're watching me.

Like?

Do you have to weigh them? Do you have to take their temperatures? You have to check them for fleas? Like what kinds of things are are scientists looking for?

Right? So there's usually this is everything that we're doing. So we catch them, we weigh, then we take a whole set of morphological measurements. Right. We want to know not just how much they weigh, but you know how much of that is fat versus bone and things like that. Certainly I look for flea infections. I usually feel around, see if they have any broken bones, check their tails. I usually will check to see if they're pregnant or

If there is one that's injured or has an infestation. Can because you're a researcher and not a wildlife we have or where's the line between getting it help and letting nature do its thing? How do you decide?

My general default is to let nature tickets. Course, I usually think if it's something that I personally have caused. I definitely have had a squirrel to kind of get a piece of skin, you know, on their nose or whatnot, scratched from the mal trap or whatever. I will tend to swipe a little piece of you know, spooring on that nose before I let them go. But generally speaking, I let nature tickets. Course, I have not ever come across a squirrel that I've needed to do something significant

I mean I feel like they just probably got wind of you and just respect you a lot. I think probably.

Well, it makes it so much easier if they would just kind of stand up and be like, Hi, I weigh two and fifty grams. Here's my measurements. I'm not fragment.

I'm a real knocked up right now. A great time a couple months ago. What about I have a million questions for you. I cannot tell you how exciting this is. If you could stand on a cosmic soapbox and have the biggest bullhorn ever to bust some flim flam about squirrels. What is the biggest misconception that you're like people.

It's not like that, I would say. People often ask me about rabies, like I'm afraid to catch rabies and things like that. And there's never been a case of a rodent carrying rabies, and so there's never been any kind of report of squirrels carrying rabies. And so that's

You were an Arizona, and I feel like in my brain someone says, squirrels Arizona bubonic plague plague? Yes, did I make that up?

So bubonic plague is definitely a thing to be worried about. When I work at the Kassa Grunde Ruins since the National Monument, they would have their fleas tested all to see if there was any chance of plague. Unfortunately, all four years that I was there, there was no chance of plagu.

Okay, So, according to the CDC, small rodents like squirrels and hamsters and kuinea pigs and chipmunks and rats and durbils and mice and bunnies are almost never found to be infact with the rabies and they have not been known to transmit rabies to humans. However, groundhogs they got a little more chunk of their trunks, they have bigger bodies,

The most endangered mammal in North America is a squirrel species. The Mount Gram red squirrel is the most endangered mammal in North America. Now it only resides on one mountaintop. When I was there studying them, their numbers were probably in the two to three hundreds. I can say that a few years ago they were down below one hundred. They've kind of come back a little bit.

But is that all habitat loss or climate?

It is a The Mount Graham is a whole ecosystem of a mess. So yes, there's a lot of habitat loss. It was slated to have two dozen telescopes built on the top of the mountain, and they were denied and some were built, and then there was an insect infested it's sacred in American land. There was a several large forest fires. There's an endangered raptor that comes through that

It sounds like they were cursed by a witch. Oh boy, So now it might be an okay time to tell you that we have episodes on fire ecology, indigenous fire ecology, fulminology about lightning strikes that cause forest fires, and a recent field trip episode about raptors. All link them in the show notes. But yes, Mount Graham is a ten thousand foot tall peak in the southeastern corner of Arizona. So this Mount Graham red squirrel. It's about eight inches long.

They actually thought that they were extinct into the mid eighties and a hunter brought one in and wild effeers were like, oh, that is not the aport squirrel that you should be hunting. That is probably the endangered montgomer And squirrel.

That must have been a huge day in the scarritiology community. Yes, they must have been popping bottles. I know that they couldn't text each other, but they must have been paying long distances to be like, yes, yeah, I like Barbie, I got some news that is so exciting. What about tiny squirrels on the big screen? Is there a favorite squirrel in film or TV that you're like, they got that right? Or I like that one?

You know, I do love me a scrat. I keep waiting for squirrel Girl to come out. I have a number of squirrel Girl paraphernalias in my office and things like that. She was supposed to be in so many Marvel superheroes. I have so many figurines of her. I cannot wait for her. Doreen to come out and show everybody what a badassh you really is, because you know, supposedly is kick Deadpool's ass. You know, thunis ass, you know Wolverine like she is just as bad ass in

I'm waiting just a short ps. So La is very small. And I happen to know Milana Wintrope, the actress and the director who was slated to play squirrel Girl for Marvel, and I texted her. I told her that she has a friend in the squirrel world, and she said that that was the most giantest honor I know, and she'd pass it along to Ryan North, the comic book creator, who is the real hero, she says, behind squirrel Girl. And also there's a six episode scripted podcast series starring

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Okay your questions. Let's start with one about goth squirrels, shall we asked by Cooper Moore, Kyler Murphy and Clay Mormon, who says I've seen a ton of melanistic gray squirrels in Ohio and Toronto, but none in New England. What's the deal? And Jess Trezon has seen them in central Illinois but almost none in and around Chicago. Huh populations pockets of squirrels like the all black squirrels in DC. Absolutely yeah, the Canadian black squirrels. How did they get

People love squirrels when they move them everywhere, that's the easy answer, right So here I'm here in Ohio. And the very classic ancer is that a man went on vacation in Canada, found these black squirrels, fell in love with them, caught ten of them, brought them back and released them.

So, like anything having to do with love and smuggling, it's complicated. But the Smithsonian in Washington says that it has the receipts dating back to the year nineteen hundred when this superintendent of the National Zoo, one Frank Baker, was thirsty for the squirrels that Canada had and got about eight or ten of them sent and they were the talk of the town at this zoo in Washington, DC.

It's a single gene. If you're missing one little part of your gray gene, right, you become this dark black squirrel. If you get both copies are black. If you get one copy, you're just kind of more grayish and you're missing your white belly and things like that. But certainly, I mean, we have black squirrels here in Ohio. They are coming kind of moving down from Canada and dispersing down and once the trait gets into the population. It

I know not everyone has a thermophysiologist that they can text on a whim, but I hit up my friend doctor Shane Campbell Stateton of the Thermo Physiology episodes, and he said, I would imagine being able to absorb more heat from the environment during a time when heat is at a metabolic premium like winter, would have clear benefits. However, there's also a trend called glue Boers rule that says

People always say that they're smaller, or they're meaner, or they're more aggressive, and I've not seen any of that in my studies. They weigh the same as gray squirrels. I've definitely seen litters that are mixed black and gray.

Maybe different dance.

Possibly different dance, I mean, but yeah, I mean, it's just you know, Burnett's versus Blonds.

Al Ham is a first tip question asker who appears to know a little bit about this and asked, are the black squirrels introduced to several areas of the USA, like Kent, Ohio, Holland Michigan, some areas of Arizona, et cetera. Are they considered feral or because they were maybe escaped pets or does that even matter at the end of the day, most of.

Them, it doesn't matter. So gray squirrels, whether they're black or gray, have then been introduced all over the world, and they typically will cause trouble wherever they go. They are able to outcompete most of the other squirrel species, and we don't have a really easy answer as to

I had never even thought about it. If you've got an almond or a walnut orchard, do they just not like the tannic whole of those nuts?

Right? It's so much better. Why would you bother eating an acorn when you can eat an almond or walnut or a peanut.

So then I wonder what almond farmers and stuff do about that. I definitely see a lot of owl boxes near orchards, which you know, Okay, So I did look this up and catacomb of web page led me to something called uc Integrated Pest Management Program, which said deep plowing, also known as ripping along perimeters of fields will destroy burrow entrances and will help slow the rate of ground squirrel invasion in orchards. They also say burrow fumigants, toxic baits,

Yes, we didn't know that they'll just a few years ago, no one had any idea and they accidentally turned on a black bl and it was like, oh crap, this is like right pink, right purple. It's pretty amazing.

For more on this, you can see the paper using mass spectrometry to investigate fluorescent compounds in squirrel fur, which will treat you to the visual of this fuzzy, furry flying squirrel cradled in the palm of a researcher exposed to black light, and the squirrel's belly looks like a neon pink hallucination. Why is this happening? Well, like many things,

I mean they can see each other, other things can see them or not see them. Right, The amount of UV radiation that happens at night is very different than the amount that happens during the day. The types of you know, eye receptors and things like that.

Do you think that they are better equipped to see that?

Yes?

With night vision? Yeah, which brings me to Madison Hunter's question says, not sure if you will cover flying squirrels. But I had one as a pet when I was in middle school and I noticed it was quite active at night. And Madison says, I would usually play music to sleep, and I often caught it doing what appeared to be dancing to the music. Do you think it's possible that squirrels get down?

Let's boogie. I've never personally seen it. I don't want to say that it couldn't possibly, but I've never seen it.

And what about the nocturnal versus diurnal like is it totally depend on the environment and the squirrel So.

Really there aren't very many tree squirrels or ground squirrels that are not turtle. Usually it's the flying squirrels that are nocturnal.

Oh and those again in Leeland, like those words, are flying squirrels closely related to walking squirrels or is that name just a misnomer?

It's just a total misnomber. They don't fly at all. They glide right, there's nothing. They have no capacity to actually gain lift by you know, flapping or anything. They literally are just taking advantage of the ability to get from point A to point B much faster by gliding than by going down the tree, running across the ground and going back up the tree.

But thems is squirrels, Yes, okay, absolutely so, everyone such as Donnia Khan, Arena Disaso, Aaron and Anderson, Britney Shafis, Francis Hirst, Brubaker, Kimberly, Bryant, Hudson Ansley, and the squirrel queen who asked about flying squirrels. The expert word is, so the flying is a no, The squirrel is a yes, yes, yes, Okay, Oh my gosh, I've never seen one in person, but so.

You need to go to Japan. So one of the questions I almost always get asked is what's your favorite squirrel? Oh, they're like children. You cannot pick a favorite child. But if you're going to press me, I will typically tell you it's the two Japanese squirrels. So the Japanese pigmy dwarf squirrel, which is teeny tiny little puffball, and Musasabe. Musasabi is an eight pound flying squirrel.

What that's a baby. That's the size of an infant human.

It's like the size of your housecat. Right, And so when it glides over your head, it's like somebody has hurled a trash can lid over your head. Speeds up to thirty five miles an hour when they hit the tree. When they you know land, you can just hear this slam, and then you hear them kind of climbing up and

Well, someone asked if there was a black squirrel lab breach conspiracy, AZM. Have you heard that they escaped from a lab? Is there a conspiracy about this?

No?

And generally speaking, you know, picking squirrels inside is not always like good thing. They really do chew everything. I would not want a lab full of squirrels in any way, shape or form. Squirrels stay outside, is what I always tease my students.

If you had a pet male squirrel, would it be so horny all the time, because that must be why they have giant falls?

Right right, There were definitely three points when it is super aggressive and wanting to get outside and things like that. Absolutely, people who keep squirrels as pets generally don't keep them for very long because once they get to that point, they are just aggressive and bitey and one out.

Well, you've been in academia a long time and you've been researching squirrels for a long time. And we have a ton of people who I will list in and aside, including Adrian who works on an elementary school campus and whose students have become a sessed with crime squirrel one who rifles through their backpacks and patron Alec Joseph whose friends have quote college squirrel trauma, and Mary con Cannon. Natalie Jones, Chelsea, Victoria Turner, Cassandra Grafts from Tara Tiger Studio.

I think because they are so charismatic, people feed them all the time. I mean, I can tell you that the squirrels on my campus are twenty percent larger than if they were just out somewhere else. And people know that I study squirrels on campus. I'm well known, squirrel doc is well known. But people still will feed squirrels.

How dare?

How dare?

Patricia Juese notes that they found a squirrel eating a hot dog bund in a tree a few weeks ago. I mean, just the idea of them eating whole hot dog bond. Chandler Weddington wants to know, how do they not get poisoned when they eat mushrooms? Do they ever get high? How do they know? I can't I can't forage for mushrooms, and I have a computer in my pocket.

So they do eat mushrooms that would be poisonous to us. So they clearly have a different digestive system and processing system than we do. And they probably do have occasionally had psychedelic mushrooms. I have seen videos of squirrels drunk after they've eaten pumpkins or apples or things like that that have fermented and have alcohol in them, and really can't climb up a tree very well. They kind of keep falling off and falling over and lack of coordination.

Do you think they're having fun or do you think they're like, what the fuck? Why is the tree moving?

Like?

Why's the tree spinning? Sometimes it's a fermented pumpkin, sometimes it's a fizzy crab apple, and sometimes it's standing under a keg like a rainforest shower. Reported by Buzz sixty.

Operators at the Honeybourne Railway Club say when they opened up they found beer spilled all over the floor, glasses knocked off the shelves, and bottles scattered everywhere. Employees thought they'd been burgled, But then the culprit staggered into view, a slow moving squirrel, still apparently intoxicated from lapping up the fruits of his destructive rampage.

So it happens, and this is why squirrels don't have driver's licenses. Sad Jess Donald wants to know how many nuts canna fit in their mouth? And also apologies if that sounds in appropriate, how big are their face versus when it comes to their ludicrously capacious face, how much can they fit in there? Or do chipmunks really have that down?

Chipmunks really have that down. Squirrels still have pouches and they can pack some good food in there, but chipmunk are the ones really who kind of like right have that like big expanding piece. And like I do catch chipmunks in our traps, and my favorite thing is when you grab them, the first thing they do is just kind of regurgitate all of that that's in their mouth. It just kind of all just like just falls out, like I am so sorry. You can have this later.

It, just take it.

I don't want this.

Nick Nikash wants to know, did squirrels invent maple syrup? Have you heard this?

No?

I don't know.

I mean, certainly they will eat sap. Certainly they will pull the outer bark off and eat that inner camium and and things like that, particularly when there's not a lot of food to eat. And so maybe you could say that they, you know, have long time taken advantage of that.

What It's true according to the Journal of Mammalogy paper Maple Sugaring by Red Squirrels, in which doctor Bernd Heinrich writes, red squirrels make a tap via a single pair of chisel like grooves from one bite into the sappy xylum layer of maple trees. But they're write quote, the dripping dilute sap was not harvested. Instead, the squirrels came back later and selectively visited the trees that had been punctured

From everything that they eat? Yeah?

Is it good to set up like a little water feature fountain?

You can? They usually won't drink from it, though it's not something they won't so.

Don't get your feelings certif they don't. No, And this one about squirrel memory was on the minds of Pupita, Diana Teeter, Alexandra cattool On, klaush, Loreene Evans, Taylor Faukner, Jeff Berg, and Alex Keeley. A ton of people want to know how do they remember where they hit their food? Do they have that kind of memory year after year?

Probably not year after year because most of the resources are probably gone within a year. We do know that the size of their hippocampus, which we know is used in special memory, does increase in the fall when acorns are present. There's research that clearly shows that I was part of that as an undergrad as well. The size of the hippo campus in spring versus fall, it's much larger in fall. For them to try and remember that.

Also, in case you think scatter hoarder is an unnecessary insult, it's not just a way to say that you're a mess squirrels. It's just a mammalogy scritiology term for hiding your shit in a few different places, which is a thing that you might do with lip bombs or money, except it's lunch and it's in the dirt. A few people, including Amanda and Chase panics want to know, by the way,

I don't think so, but I'm willing to bet that her behavior is the same every time, and so she recognizes the same.

Behavior Madison Hunter and some other people also Wild Pack of Dogs, Nicole d J, Dave Dbairmaker and first of question asker Julia Suamela wants to know if you've seen Mark Robers squirrel obstacle course videos.

So the first challenge is the bridge of instability. Now this may look easy, but the trick is it attaches at a single point on each end, and from a physics standpoint, that makes it no different than trying to crawl across the tyrope.

So these videos went up during the early pandemic and they feature a backyard squirrel, well several going through what is described as an American Ninja worrior course to reach a bird feeder. These videos have wracked up hundreds of millions of views. How do you feel about them?

I mean it's awesome and I love that. I love it when people ask me about you know, they'll describe their entire setup of bird feeders and things like that. It's so great and it just shows really how smart they are and you know, spatially conscious. And then he has the whole piece about it, like when they get launched that they always do land correctly and you can really easily watch how they use that tail as a rudder and there and everything, and so it's just perfect.

Everyone, I guess with a backyard looking at you. Katie Courtwright and Ebbie Sage, Scarberry Grace Rubis show. Katie Armstrong wants to know how do we keep the bird feed safe? Jenny low Roads want to know why do they eat all the bird seed? With capital A and raining Emily asked this question. So my grandfather is constantly a war with squirrels because they eat his bird seed. And their question was is it bad for squirrels to eat bird seed or just some beef that my grandfather has with

No, it's just a yeah, no, there's nothing bad about bird seed or things like that. And my answer, my best answer, so listen up, is hot pepper bird seed. Go someplace it sells specialty bird seed. Get the hot pepper bird seed. It'll stop the squirrels from eating it. They'll stop the deer from meeting it, they'll stop the

That's just birds can't taste it, so right. We did a Chickens episode recently about putting red pepper flakes in your chicken feed. Not only are the girls like hell no, but also you get really beautiful orange yolks. Yep, but it does bring you to a question a lot of people want to know, such as Cynthia Connor, Catherine Finny, Megan Guthrie, Maya, Cherry Webb, Pascal parent and Jackie Ross. How does one protect their gardens as much as they love them? Ls and p First time question asker, how

Nope? World domination for sure.

What about a net? Get a net?

I mean, sure you can, you can try a net and keep them and the birds out, but sometimes, I mean, they're pretty smart and they can kind of usually get between the fence and the net, and like the birds who just kind of go from the top, and so it's hard, especially if you live someplace that has ground squirrels or groundhogs or woodchucks, like you're in trouble.

Well, they got some judgment from some people who wanted to know why they taunt us by not eating the whole thing. Camille Charlotte Blath rip to your half eaten tomatoes, and Nina Giocave says, why do they taunt me by leaving half eaten strawberries on the edge of my garden? Apparently? Marika says, why do you squirrels leave treats and leftovers on my window sills? Why do they not finish?

I have complained about this too. They will eat one bite out of the tomato and then put it down and then reach to the next one eat the next bite of the tomato, and so it's not like they respect me either. I think it comes from that natural behavior to not eat the whole acorn, not eat the whole seed, right, So they'll eat the top half of the acorn because it has less tannins, so it means more protein for them, and then drop it and move on to the next one. And because it is so abundant.

Take the best bite and move on, people. Horrible strategy for humans, works good for squirrels, who can be so frustrated with them. I mean, who doesn't, I guess want to just go to a Smorgasport child, little nibble everything else, both.

Eat the best part of the strawberry and just yeah, the rest of it.

Stephanie Coombs wants tips on keeping them out of my shed aside from rebuilding it. If they trap them, will they come back? And again a great story. But in terms of hiding mushrooms, apparently Stephanie's rubber boots were filled this year with mushroom, which is so cute. But if you wanted to keep them out of a structure such as attic squirrel having Hannah Nolan and James Nance and ness and Sydney I and Abbi Greeb who struggles with garage squirrels.

You need to make sure that there's no way that you can get in. Usually we have to make sure you block up any holes or entrances or things like that, because if you don't take them very far away, they will most likely come back.

Art by DJ has a weird one. They say a neighbor had a squirrel one by one steal all the bulbs off her string of deck lights, chewing them off at the cord and then just running away with them have you ever heard of this?

Yes, and I don't know why. So their insizors continue to grow, so they have that need to continue to gnaw for their entire lives to keep their tooth wear down. And there definitely are some plastics that seem to be more favorite than others. And so I don't know what the component of the plastic is. I can tell you. On our campus, they bought some of the recycled plastic picnic tables that are supposedly made from corn cobs. Oh, apparently those are very tasty. Oh any like hole or

Well, I gotta say I had a preas corn stopped working. I don't know where. I took it up with my hoe. I said, let me know if you find a dead raccoons in there, lolol. They called me back. They're like, you got a nest in your car? They cracked over my hood, half an orange, a bunch of snail shells, and apparently the wire harness and Toyta Prias's is moved with soybean oil and it is scrumptious. You've heard I'm sure you've heard this a lot, right.

Yep, that's soy plastic. So ugh.

It was so cute, but there was also so much poo and I was like, guys, that almost sounds like rats, right yeah, Okay, squirrels throughout the hook. Another reason why I love Patreon questions is because this I did not know a lot of people. James Hales, Ama, Craig Sedoni, S and Irish Touchings. Words asked. Is it true that red squirrels will chew off the gonecks of gray squirrels to decimate the gray squirrel's population? Is that true that they cast rate each other with their mouths?

Never?

Never?

No, Red squirrels are definitely far more aggressive, okay than gray squirrels are fox squirrels. I generally say my rule of thumb is the smaller the squirrel, the more aggressive, or the largest squirrel, the more dopey it is. But no, there's none of that happening. So if there are red squirls around, they will typically chase off the gray squirrels and fox squirrels, but there's no interaction like that.

Oh slim flambusted.

So I think sometimes people kind of misjudge that because when males are sexually active, you can clearly see their testies. They're rather large, you've got to set a ball. But when they're not sexually active, those testies regress back up into the body cavity, and so then you don't see them.

Oh so they put them into retirement. Yep. Okay, well that's good because I was about to that blew my whole mind. But as long as you're busting flim flam, let's talk TikTok Amanda lask first, he question As and

I know completely what you're talking about.

In a cool life act of controlling squirrels, you could actually control squirrels by using your hand in a wave motion and you could see that the scroll comes towards me. I learned this from a friend who was in the squirrel club. So now the squirrel's super close to me. You could do this on all squirrels, be careful.

I had to try it because I'm like, I've never seen this. I have no idea. I've had zero luck, so I don't know what this is. Nothing I can think of it said. It kind of mimics like the giving of food, and so maybe squirrels who are in urban parks who are used to being fed by humans recognize that kind of up and down motion, but I don't. I don't have another explanation.

Well, as long as we're communicating with appendages. Chris Whitman, Yes, Jeanette mass mccurty, Megan Gothrie, they want to know, in Christ's words, what does the fast tail twitching mean? What are they communicating with their tails?

Typically? When it's kind of flipping back and forth. That's kind of a predator alarm call. It's a visual predator alarm calls.

Okay, if they're twitching and screaming at you, they're like, you're gonna kill me, Get out here. I hate you, stranger danger.

I'm telling everybody around me and preator here.

Wow, they're trying to cancel you because what they're doing because we could kill them, and I see you. Yeah, we are predator. There's squirrel hunters are out there. Have you ever eaten squirrel?

Not knowingly? I feel like that's a line you can you can't cross, right, Like, I'm sure that somebody has sped it to me at some point, but not knowingly.

Do you have any enemies? Do you think anyone's done it?

Just just no, not that I know of, but I'm sure somebody, you know, I would think that that would be a welcoming kind of thing.

And if your toes curled and your throat seized hearing that. I do have some historical news. So a lot of humans have been eating a lot of squirrel for a long time, and squirrels have been called the chicken of the trees and in some cultures, squirrels are considered kid's food, truly the chicken nuggets of the woods, and there are one point five million registered squirrel hunters in the US.

Squirrel hunting is a million dollars a year business in Mississippi. Like it is a hugely popular pastime, so it is a reason for management of score populations to keep numbers high so that people do have access to them. The squirrel that was introduced on Mount Graham was introduced purely for hunting purposes, so that people would have a squirrel to hunt.

Oh wow, until we did a Mountain Goat episode, I didn't realize exactly how much. Obviously, conservation effort is also like we got to crunch the numbers so we can figure how many it's cool to kill, which is better than not crunching the numbers. But you know, historically a lot of conservation is also paid for by hunting licenses too, So back back and forth, I think that there maybe might be a notion that like, if you hunt this animal, you don't care about their well being. But it's way

Know, right right. I get asked questions all the time by squirrel hunters. They want to know you better ways to find squirrels, catch scrolls, things like that. I also get asked by fishermen about squirrels because scroll fur is used in a lot of fishing lures, so fly fishing lores and so.

What about jack Olne Wheelan and Kate Armstrong and the diitary quality want to know in Katie verts, is it true those squirrel has a range of about ten miles and it can find its way home if you drive it ten miles away and drop it off.

Probably ten miles is a little far, but not crazy far. Yeah. Really, I'm definitely thinking the squirrels five miles and had them reliably come back, so, particularly during mating season and things like that, they males will go pretty far. How are they doing that world domination? No? I mean they specially have a good recognition. Clearly they have some kind of I don't want to say homing, but they clearly have some kind of spatial recognition where they can come back.

That's amazing. I wonder if you'll ever find out they have like pigeon magnets in their head.

Yeah, some kind of compass, you know.

Yeah, And that compass might be the himpocampus, which not only helps squirrels with their spatial memory to recall all that scatter hoarding, it could be at play when it comes to squirrels making their way back home, which can definitely happen when people trap like an attic squirrel and then drive five or ten miles away and release it in a new part of town, and they're like, who

So, I mean, we don't really know about social learning in terms of like feeding an acorn or things like that, but a lot of their food has kind of that harder outer shell, So acorns, buck eyes, while nuts like all those kinds of things have that really hard care pace that they have to get through and kind of d shell, and so a care pod to me, probably isn't all that much different than a fuck eye or something like that, where they really kind of have to

For more on carib than not chocolate tree with a bonker's history that might be grown on a street. We'll link that episode in the show notes. And last listener question, I could literally talk to you for like ten hours. You are so lucky that you did not get seated next to me on a flight to New Zealand because I would be You're like, I need to sleep. A good question that I didn't even think of. So many people Britney Kaufman m N nine and of course Camille

It's in the ground. I mean it's kind of like tic TACs, like tilly beans, Like do.

They poo in their nest or does that? Unknown?

Yeah, typically there is kind of an area well it'll collect and things like that, but you know, if possible, they'll go outside other.

Than podcast hosts. What's the worst thing about your job other than me asking you questions forever because you're the best.

But that's I said there, that's not a bad part of my job, right, Like when I realized I could kind of mix the genetics and wildlife piece to be helpful, you could think about charismatic megafauna and how cool it would be to work on, you know, mountain lions and things like that. And then it was like, no, I could have this charismatic minor fauna. I don't want to say micro because they're definitely not that small, and they're not really mezzo because they're not kind of medium like

But what does suck about it? Though? Get real with us.

When I was in Arizona and trapping at one hundred and ten degrees or on top of Mount Graham and you know, in ten feet of snow and snowshoes, trying to find the one squirrel mess and determine if there is a squirrel. It's not always the most fun. So it was the most comfortable.

What about Have you ever had a favorite moment on the job?

I do. So when I started here at Balden Wallace, they were very concerned that people would be worried that I was harming squirrels and that Peter would be protesting and things like that. And I was like, I invite anybody who has any questions to come with me, you know, come trap with me. Watch the squirrels, watch what I do.

This has been just such a joy. I cannot tell you the emotions I had when I clicked on your Instagram and saw like the follow back. I was like, Karen minrons.

See and I had just the opposite. I had the complete imposter like like, why does she want to talk to me?

No?

Trust I looked at your research, It's like this is the squirrel expert for me. I would accept no others. So don't be scared to ask smart people scorely questions and then just scatter hooard that information for your next dinner party. Now you can follow doctor Karen Monroe at squirrel Doc, which is linked in the show notes. We also linked to the two causes we donated to in her name. We're at Ologies on Twitter and Instagram. In

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