Getting even with a squirrel
By By Otha Barham / outdoors editor
Jan. 2, 2003
Every hunter has had his or her presence announced to every living creature in the woods by a barking squirrel upon entering a pristine spot with expectations of slipping up on a deer or some other game animal. Usually it is right after you have carefully chosen each foot placement and avoided snapping a single stick or shuffled a single leaf for a hundred yards and are feeling proud of your skill at arriving at your spot in total silence.
The squirrel blows your whole stalk. And your thoughts, and sometimes verbalizations, directed at the little rodent are always uncomplimentary and often profane.
Well, in the big western mountains where huge bull elk thrive, there is a squirrel endowed with a raspy bark whose volume matches the size of the bigger game animals. It is as if the Creator, in the interest of equality and mindful of our gray squirrels' role of alerting whitetails, created a similar alarmist for mountain elk, expanding the squirrels noise making capability to match the size of mountain game.
We call this mountain squirrel a pine squirrel, though I have never seen one in any tree except fir and spruce. Outdoor writer Robert P. Anderson has a more complete name for this squirrel That Mouthy Little Expletive of a Pine Squirrel.
Complaints and revenge
In Anderson's article in the current issue of "Bugle," the magazine of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, he bemoans the encounters he has had with this pestiferous little loudmouth. It is a journal of quiet moments abruptly interrupted. But happily his article is also a story of revenge. He paid one of the nosy little critters back for all the misdeeds of his brothers. In so doing, the writer got even for all of us who have stalked the mountains and had our daily hunts disrupted by this inconsiderate little beast.
Here is how one little pine squirrel got his comeuppance. Anderson found a slender saddle between an elk bedding ground amid thick firs and a patch of mountain mahogany, a favorite browse plant. A natural crossing lay on the ridge top where the writer sneaked in at daylight and took a stand, sitting snugly against a tree. His approach was silenced by four inches of fresh, light snow.
Pine squirrels always find you, no matter your concealment, and begin their deafening barking, a raspy whistle that grates on your nerves after their initial blast scares the starch out of you. But no squirrel had arrived for a full five minutes and it began to snow those big goose-feather snowflakes. The snow intensified until Anderson said, "I couldn't have seen a bull elephant at fifty feet."
He snuggled up tight against the tree trunk, well hidden within its low-lying branches. He would enjoy the scene and wait out the storm.
Suddenly he caught movement straight ahead and spotted a pine squirrel headed his way on the ground. The squirrel would almost bury itself in the fresh snow with each leap that brought it toward the tree under which Anderson had taken a stand with his legs parted, knees slightly bent and his rifle across his lap.
Repayment plan
On came the squirrel, its eyes blurred by the falling snow. Anderson formulated a plan. "It was like a slowed-down hunting video, only instead of a bull elk coming closer it was a leering, tail-jerking, sputtery-mouthed pine squirrel." The hunter's plan became clear to him. Although he realized a bull elk might be approaching, nothing else in the world mattered but carrying out his plan.
According to the writer, the squirrel's first moves after the scream resembled those of a breakdancer. "I don't know where that squirrel went after getting its bearings. I sincerely hope it was scared into impotency," he writes.
Likewise for me and for the thousands of mountain hunters who have suffered the transgressions of that "Mouthy Little Expletive of a Pine Squirrel."
