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What is hiding in the pines?

Living in the Lost Pines adjacent to Buescher Park has been quite an adventure over these past years. We have seen the two wildfires that turned the park into a smoking landscape with the silhouette of the once grand pines etched in ghostly ash on the ground.  We have also seen the rebirth of the forest with an explosion of fauna and flora. Without the yaupons choking the understory, the variety was simply astonishing.  

 

Even so I was still surprised while sitting on the back porch swing one evening. In the first very brief glimpse I had of it, I didn’t know what it was. A rat? Hopefully not! But then suddenly it popped around the tree and onto the bird feeder. What large and soulful eyes it had! And that white underbelly…I still had no idea what it was, but there were now several of them on the bird feeders.

 

All was revealed when I caught sight of a white underbelly with legs spread wide gliding down from a post oak about 30 feet away. It landed with a slapping noise and dashed around to the other side of the tree.

 

They were flying squirrels! I was shocked to say the least. I doubted that they were actually flying squirrels. I had to look them up to make sure. I was further surprised to find that they are common residents of the lost pines, ha!! I had imagined flying squirrels to be inhabitants of tropical jungles, not the loblollies of the Lost Pines. How exciting to find these beautiful creatures living here.

 

Since then, we have made sure that the bird feeders have peanut hulls and black oil seeds even at night. The flying squirrels glide down at night and feast and we get to watch them. One of them will not even vacate the feeder so I can add food until I am inches away.  

 

Of course, we had to put up a flying squirrel house nearby which they immediately occupied. Unfortunately, our local grey squirrels ran them out and converted it to a squirrel home. Maybe poly lumber and a metal ring around the entry is the answer to that problem. After all, the grey squirrels already have squirrel condominiums to live in that we provided. 

 

No telling what other surprises are out there in the forests around our house. Giant spiders in the loblollyies?  Our tree guys tell us there are….


 
 
 

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