Greetings and salutations, everyone; yes, once again it is I, Chess the purebred border collie, filling in for the guy I live with, and here today to answer the burning question, “Do squirrels eat pizza?” You may remember me from other such informative posts as “A Pattern Emerges” and “Wildlife Showcase”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose.
You may indeed wonder about the title of today’s post. The guy I live with has been tidying up the garden in order to get it ready for winter (that’s me watching, in the picture above), and there was all this commotion on the north side of the house, in a place where there usually isn’t much commotion at all. (Look to the left of the wren house.)
“Do squirrels eat pizza?” the guy I live with asked me. I know I like pizza, so why wouldn’t squirrels?
There was someone else interested in the pizza, too.
And, in fact, yesterday, the cat was seen to be eating a slice of pizza on the garage roof next door, to the south.
What I wanted to know was if things like slices of pizza lying around are a common feature of this neighborhood. I guess they are, according to the guy I live with, who says weird things happen all the time. I never find any pizza lying on the ground, on my walks, though.
In non-pizza-related news, the snowdrop opened some more today.
It’s not open now, though, because the weather kind of changed today.
I hope you enjoyed this brief but informative post. If anyone ever asks if squirrels eat pizza, you know what the answer is now.
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
WOW!! Today’s post has it all: squirrels, pizza, cat, and DoG! I LOVE IT. Great photography — it’s simply amazing how you do it, Chess, lacking thumbs and all.
Snow. I know this makes pure bred bored collies happy, so I’m happy for you, but sheesh. Snow.
I have actually seen squirrels eating pizza before, and it looked just like the picture. I was walking past a tall metal-mesh trash can in a park in New Rochelle, New York and there was a squirrel perched on the edge of it, holding on to a piece of pizza that was bigger than himself. My first thought was not about the pizza-eating squirrel; my first thought was “Who threw away an almost whole slice of pizza???” In my experience, even bad pizza is still pizza, in other words, the greatest food on the planet, and I’ve had pizza in highly non-pizza countries (worst pizza ever: Glasgow in 1975) and it was STILL worth eating. And then I thought, “That squirrel holding the pizza in his paws is really cute.”
My favorite squirrel-eating-strange-food sighting was at Columbia University in 1992. I was walking along a path to the library, walking with my head down of course because that’s how you find Iceland kroners and opal bracelets, and I unexpectedly made eye contact with a squirrel hunched under a low bush. I was stopped short because the little fella was holding an enormous piece of yellow cake (cut square, no icing, like from a sheet cake) in his paws and the look in his eyes was more complex than the usual panic (or, in Earl’s case, smugness) you see in squirrel’s eyes when you make eye contact with them. His look was part befuddlement: “I don’t know what to do!!! Do squirrels eat cake??” and part pleading: “Please, giant hoomin, don’t steal my cake.” I have thought about that squirrel, on and off, for years. I think he’s so memorable because when you combine panic with confusion and consternation, you get a piercing vulnerability, and I’ve always hoped that squirrel found a way to get that enormous piece of cake home, safe and sound. P.S., it was only enormous compared to a squirrel.
Sorry about the length of my comment. But, squirrels.
Thanks; long comments are okay. (As you’ll see.) And much shorter than the spam comments we have to delete. WordPress wants to moderate any comments if it sees even the slightest change in email address or whatever.
Squirrels do, in fact, eat cake. The guy I live with used to say to my mommy that if a story is worth telling once, it’s worth telling a hundred times, though maybe she said that about him.
It can be windy here. Like a hundred miles per hour type windy. The highest part of the Continental Divide is just west of us, and when air swoops down from that, it really swoops. So, like, windy.
Well, one night the wind blew. And the next morning there was a box, with a whole, uneaten cake in it, that had “Congratulations Renee” written on it in icing, sitting in the front yard. It had been blown from some place far west. Maybe Utah or California. My mommy tried the cake and said it was only slightly stale. I mean, that’s what you would do, right? try a piece of cake from a box left in your front yard by Unknown Forces? it could have been something other than the wind. But anyway the cake was put out on the compost pile (gone now) and squirrels ate all of it.
Pizza is indeed excellent. Last winter the guy I live with said he was going to spend all winter making pizzas, and giving them away (that’s what he does during the winter; bake, and give away the baked goods), and looked at the Fante’s catalog for pizza pans, but then nothing came of it.
My mommy made pizzas from time to time, and they were good, because she was a good cook. Eventually she let the guy I live with do almost all the cooking, because it was something he could do. But anyway there was one time, on a really hot day, when he came home from work and there was the pizza, and so he ate it, with some beer. (The guy I live with says “beer” is plural, like deer.) The phone rang and it was work, asking him to come back, but he said he couldn’t because he’d just had four beer. The person on the other end was shocked, because the guy I live with had just left work less than an hour before. Well it was a hot day and the beer were really cold and the pizza was extremely good, what could he say?
As a resident of NYC, i have seen many a squirrel emerge from a park trash can with pizza. My parents’ cats also liked pizza (my cats are only fed friskies). When i was a grad student in ucla, i once saw a squirrel crawl into an unattended backpack, open a paper bag, and zoom off with an entire blueberry muffin.
I’m not sure why you have so many unattended slices in suburban Colorado but bravo for the wildlife.
The guy I live with said he used to have a cat ….yes, I know, horrible to think of….who would open a box of doughnuts and grab one with a claw, and drag it across the floor. The interesting thing will be to see if the pizza slices keep appearing. I like a good mystery.
Yes, Chess, that’s the question, the reason for all the unattended slices. Never happens around here. Of course, we don’t have squirrels, at least not on this island. And where did that cat come from? Rather cute cat, actually. Looks like the type of cat at which a Border Collie would bark. Also looks like the cat would disregard the barking. Cat would regard pizza, though. Everyone likes pizza. Sadly, I have no pizza stories of my own to share. Sweet, vulnerable snowdrop, I hope it shows itself another day. Can’t get enough photos of Chess exploring the snowy world of transformed garden, so keep ’em coming. You live in a grand space, Chess, encompassing both pizza-eating squirrels, snowdrop blooms and early snow.
Thanks; it’s supposed to be zero here tonight. No degrees at all. Colder than Minnesota. The guy I live with bought a package of boys’ socks which he claims he’s going to put on my paws, or my paw with the hurt toenail anyway. Want to bet? The cat belongs to the neighbors across the street. It spends most of its time over here. Well, I mean there’s the new sand pile (“That better not happen!”) and rodents to stare at. There are two new cats, actually, and they spend most of their time in the front yard, just sitting there, which I understand is what cats mostly do.
That’s what cats do, when they are not sleeping! I like the four beer story, and the cake.
All true. I suppose there are no cats outside tonight. It’s a bad thing to let cats outside on nights like this. (Too cold, too early, though one time in November there was a 70 degree drop in temperature instead of the just 60 degree drop this time. Sometimes the plants don’t like it.)
Shocking weather there when I have been complaining about 32 F today!
It’s so cold, it’s cold. Supposed to get to ten below tonight. –23C. Record cold temperatures.
Seems the critters were responding to the imminent polar vortex swooping down into most of North America. Hope you were loving it Chess even though he was probably worried sick about the plants in the botanical garden out back.
Thanks; well, the guy I live with claims that the whole thing came and went so fast that maybe it went unnoticed …..We are generally opposed to any kind of vortex here.