What can I say about Squirrel Apprication Day. It's been the best day so far and I know that comes hot on the heels of cheese day yesterday.
Last week I went for lunch with some friends from work and was telling them about this blog and which days coming up I was looking forward to, one of which was today. I was saying how I wanted to go feed some squirrels and Christina very confidently was like 'I know a guy'. I had many follow up questions but I was instantly on board, when someone says they have a squirrel guy you shut up and see where it goes. It was 100% the right decision.
Christina's squirrel guy turned out it be the lovely Steve. A friend of a flatmate she'd had when she first moved to London who had offered to take her 'squirrelling' before. She text him to see if he'd be willing to take us and he was! In fact he'd apparently never been on the receiving end of a squirrelling text before. We made our plans, meet in Regent's Park at 12.30 and find us some squirrels.
Today rolled around and we were all excited to go, and for Jess and me to meet the mythical Steve. Who had text Christina that he would be bringing 'friendship tokens AKA almonds'.
As we walked into the park together Steve stopped us for the safety briefing and to show us the best way to feed the squirrels. Up until this point I'd imagined we'd merely be tossing nuts at squirrels not that we'd be feeding them by hand. I was excited! The safety briefing boiled down to, don't point at a squirrel in anyway or it can think a finger tip is a nut and go for it. Apparently since Steve introduced the safety talk into squirrelling sessions there's not been any bites which was reassuring. I've always been a touch nervous about going too close to them because of a story my mum has about my godmother being biten by one years ago that latched on and wouldn't let go. With the briefing concluded I felt reassured and we walked further into the park where Steve demonstrated his AMAZING squirrelling techniques.
He has a whistle and come hither gesture that they love and within a couple of minutes all four of us had successfully squirreled. The first one I fed came up and put both paws in my hand before taking the friendship token. It's paws were surprisingly cold and he left little muddy paw prints behind. Very cute. I felt like a Disney princess!
We wandered around the park feeding lots of squirrels and lots of them numerous times. Some of them if you had more than one almond in your cupped hand would stuff two into their mouths. We also fed some pigeons (honoury squirrels). We then went up to squirrel hill in the center of the park and were besieged, it was really fun and cute. Some of them are quite shy but others are really ballsy about it.
Here's a photo dump of us all squirrelling!
Steve in action!
Check out Jess's poor technique, I rate her a harsh but fair 2/10
Christina getting some squirrelly high fives
Jess finally coaxing in a nervous squirrel
Feeding a plump honoury squirrel
Me hitting peak Disney princessness
The whole time we were feeding them we were all peppering Steve with any and all squirrel based questions. He is a treasure trove of information gleaned from many squirrelling sessions.
My keys learnings were:
Squirrels don't have rabies in the UK
Squirrel bites don't normally need medical attention beyond a rinse and some antiseptic. Unless they're 'raggedy'
Squirrels preference order of nuts are as follows. 1) Almonds 2) Cashews 3) Peanuts
If it's too warm, too cold or too wet they'll hide and most likely won’t partake in squirrelling
Before we parted ways we took a high spirited selfie for this blog.
Squirrelling... An easy 10/10. Had a great time and will go again I'm sure!