Tyler Starr: 10/11 am, the Quad, and a dead squirrel...

Tyler Starr

11 October 2008 from 1120-1135

Location: The North side of the Quad

Weather: 50 ̊ F, 5 mph wind, mostly sunny

General: There is not too much activity around the Quad. Usually I’ll see crows or maybe a scrub jay, but today I only saw a few squirrels. Two were foraging along the western edge of the Quad near Doney, and I spotted another one off the northwest corner. I noticed that one of the horse-chestnut trees appears to be struggling a little bit. One of its large limbs that probably used to extend over the Quad was chopped off, which is probably the cause of its troubles. Many of its leaves, especially near the top of the tree, are already gone. This is strange, because there is still plenty of sun that it could probably still be capitalizing on, as are the other horse-chestnuts around the Quad. Since there wasn’t very much activity, I decided to walk to where we saw the baby squirrels yesterday. There were quite a few full-grown squirrels, but I did not spot any of the younger ones. I walked over by the kiln where we saw them going into the building, and I came upon a rotting squirrel carcass (see picture). Most of its meat was already gone, and its tail was the only part that didn’t appear to have been affected. The carcass was under a tree, so I wonder if it fell as Dave said actually happens fairly often with squirrels. I hope it wasn’t the parent of one of the baby squirrels.