Meatball, the Squirrel

Every afternoon, my friends put a pile of sunflower seeds on their kitchen windowsill. Three different squirrels come to gorge. The one they call Meatball was just two feet away from me as he dined, and allowed me to sketch his portrait.


Meatball has beautiful little fingers, and he grabs the seeds one by one in his fists.

At my house I don’t leave out food for the squirrels, at least not intentionally. But they get into my bird feeder anyway.

They’re not the stupid rodents I first thought them to be. They can beat almost any bird feeder baffle that I can devise for them.


Have a look at the Kung Fu Squirrel on YouTube.

I wish I could understand the squirrel mind better. I feel a basic sympathy for a dog’s or a bird’s mental state and thought process.

But I have no idea what the squirrel is thinking. They seem to be driven by a mysterious combination of determination and paranoia...and now and then a fierce Killer Instinct.