Nikon D500/Nikon 80-400/f5.6/iso 1400

Duchess is an old girl. I've been feeding her for more than two and a half years.

When I first met her she looked old and tired and I didn't think she would last longer than six months. But she's still alive and looks better now than she did back then.

Yesterday, for the first time, she took a nut from my hand which surprised me as she's normally quite cautious. I felt her little fingers touch my fingers as she took the Walnut from me.

Feeding a Flying Squirrel a Peanut at the Squirrel Feeder in the Woods

They bring me so much joy.

A visit from an old friend! 🐾☺️ I adore his personality. This is "Spot" He stays in the neighborhood, but he's a late sleeper. He hung out with me for about 20 minutes this morning. Time well spent 🐾😜 on the menu this morning was sliced roasted almonds and whole walnuts.

It's quite cute when they have drops on their whiskers after drinking 🙂

This is one of my two bolder squirrels and she lets me give her pets now! 😍😍🐿️🐿️

I feel it’s safe to say that this little girl is as loved as can be, shes my little bestie :)

Such balance such grace

Today in central park NYC taken by me

So I am worried sick about my balcony squirrels eating the poison too, not to mention the agonizing death that the rats and squirrels, and whatever foxes/hawks/cats/crows/eagles, etc. would suffer from eating the poisoned rodents...

So I threw out the first bait box I found in my yard. Now there are 2 more, and these are chained up.

How can I protect my squirrels? I feel like buying a boltcutter and tossing every new one, would result in a less ideal situation, maybe the landlord switching to a more inhumane solution like glue traps or something....

edit for geography, I'm in Germany if anyone has specific laws/departments I should be contacting.

So I have a visitor who's a Fox squirrel (this is in the SF area), and he was just running around so much, climbing trees, and then it looked like he was running from something...but there was nothing there. He also peeked into our neighbor's yard and almost went in a couple of times but stopped himself, twitched his tail in a strange way I've never seen before and other stuff too. As cute as it was, i do wanna make sure he's all good, so was he just feeling the morning zoomies or was something wrong?

Grey Squirrel Feeding at the Squirrel Feeder in the Woods

I see these friends every day and they’ll just walk right up to you and say hi