Flora & Fauna 6-17

As you know by now we are in Coarsegold, in the foothills of California where the hills are covered with Oak trees of varying varieties, Manzanita (my favorite wild shrub) and misc. stuff I don’t know. The RV Park has been nestled into the natural topography and there is a lot of wildlife around here, mostly rabbits, various types of squirrels, lizards, snakes (haven’t seen any yet) and lots of birds.

We take a walk every morning, which I had gotten out of the habit of doing, (believe me it shows) and it is a good walk here because it is really hilly. We keep our eyes peeled for snakes and crazed retirees speeding around corners in golf carts. The squirrels chatter and bark and do their thing as we pass, chasing one another or digging in the dirt…. We mostly don’t pay them much attention unless it looks like one is going to attack and believe me a couple times it has looked dicey, Larry gets more concerned than I do…hmmm, I wonder why?!

We were walking along and had just spotted a couple of pretty red wildflowers and we were talking about them when up ahead of us there was a big rustling in the trees above the street we were walking down. We never pay much attention because there always seems to be something going on up in the trees.

The branches join up across the middle and make a canopy and this hunk of green starts falling to the ground at a pretty good clip. We were wondering what the heck? As we watch them hit the ground we hear a big SPLAT…there was a gray squirrel in those leaves and twigs and it landed really, really hard and I mean SPLAT.

What a surprise that must have been! It fell from about 30 feet up and with the sound it made we expected a splatted smear, but it got up and ran over to the base of the tree it had just fallen out of and hung on looking dazed. I told Larry it was probably seeing all those little symbols in front of its eyes like they do in the cartoons.

Crazy animals…he must have chosen the wrong twigs to jump on and down he came. It made us laugh…shocking enough to the squirrel but what a shock it could have been to be driving along and have a squirrel splat down on your windshield or be walking under it and end up knocked out by a living squirrel hat. It was pretty funny and I imagine his playmate was in the tree branches wondering why squirrel one didn’t open his parachute. Hilarious.