Which one of you who's been in the woods hasn't seen this light and nimble animal? You walk along the forest path, gather mushrooms in the body and suddenly you hear a sharp, loud sound. It is played, funny and agile squirrels play on the tree. You can admire for a long time how they chase each other, running on the branches and the trunk of the tree, sometimes head down.
Squirrels do not harm anyone. In winter and summer, squirrels live in coniferous forests. In winter they carefully store food in hollows. In summer and autumn, they dry mushroom hats, cleverly stringing them on bare branches of trees. I have found mushroom storages of squirrels in the forest many times. Sitting under a tree in a dense forest, I saw a red squirrel jumping over the ground once. In her teeth, she was carrying a large, heavy bunch of ripe hazelnuts. Squirrels know how to choose the ripest nuts. They hide them in deep hollows and in winter they find their reserves unmistakably.
The usual food is protein - the seeds of coniferous trees. In the forest on the snow under the trees, one can see husks of spruce and pine cones sprinkled with squirrels in winter. Sitting high on a tree knot, holding a bump in the front legs, squirrels quickly gnaw out seeds from it, dropping scales rotating in the air, throwing a gnawed resin rod on the snow.
Depending on the yield of the pine and spruce cones, the squirrels run long distances. On their way, they swim across wide rivers, running through crowded towns and villages at night. Squirrels floating on the water lift up the fluffy tails. They can be seen from afar.
While traveling along the northern Urals, I learned that squirrels crossing wide rivers sometimes catch and swallow large pike trees. I met an amateur fisherman who used to catch such big pikes with stuffed squirrels. He dragged a stuffed man on the wireframe behind the boat on a long, strong cord, just as our fishermen dragged an ordinary spinner behind the boat. The stuffed squirrels with a strong triple hook attached to it caught the biggest, powdery pike.
In fruitful years, when there are a lot of bumps on the trees, in our Central Russian forests there are a lot of proteins accumulated. In recent times, hunters hunted for squirrels in winter, hunting for valuable squirrels' skins. Urban fashionistas wore expensive squirrel fur coats. More than a hundred small skins were needed for each fur. It is unlikely that fashionista thought and guessed how, when and where the precious squirrel skins were mined and how much was destroyed for their whims of cheerful cute forest animals.
Protein can be easily tamed and kept in captivity. I once had a friend, an archaeologist and a book lover. In his large room lived agile cheerful squirrel. She gave a lot of worries and troubles to the book-loving owner. She was running around the bookshelves tirelessly, chewing on the bindings of expensive books. I had to put a squirrel in a wire cage with a wide rotating wheel. On this wire wheel, the squirrel was running tirelessly. Proteins need constant movement, to which they are accustomed to the woods. Without such constant movement, living in captivity, squirrels get sick and die.
In autumn and spring, proteins shed. For the summer they dress in a light red coat, in late autumn, this red coat becomes gray, thick and warm. Squirrels build cozy, warm and strong nests that look like closed houses made of thin branches. These houses are usually built in forks of dense and tall coniferous trees and are difficult to see from the ground. Inside the house, squirrels are covered with soft bedding. There, squirrels take out and feed their little squirrels. The most formidable enemy of squirrels is the marten, except for the person who hunts them. Strong and evil martens mercilessly chase the squirrels, catch them and eat them, ruin their nests.
Recently, last winter, two squirrels appeared every day at the window of our forest house. We threw small pieces of black bread into the window on the snow. The squirrels picked them up and climbed up on a dense dark tree that grew under the window. Sitting on a bitch, holding a piece of bread in their front legs, they ate it quickly. Our squirrels often quarreled with the pebbles that came under the window of our house every day to eat the food prepared for them. Once walking through a path in the woods, my wife saw a familiar squirrel with a bread crust in her mouth. She ran away from the two pins that were following her persistently, trying to take away the bread.
Amazingly beautiful are the traces of squirrels in the woods on the freshly fallen pure snow. From tree to tree, these footprints stretch from tree to tree in a clear and light fluffy pattern. Squirrels sometimes run from tree to tree, then climb to the tops covered with heavy bunches of cones. Having stirred up the light tail, they shake off the snow and easily swing it from branch to branch of neighboring trees.
