> OK, *this* makes me jealous. We don't have squirrels here, or anything like them. [...]
>
> I mean, you have these LITTLE TINY WILD ANIMALS running around! All over the place! As if they were something normal, like sparrows or something! And they're CUTE! And nobody even seems to NOTICE how completely, unbelievably weird and cool that is.
>

I agree... I'm nuts about them too. Squirrels are REALLY cute, really fluffy-tailed and SO extremely agile. They can climb trees faster than they can run over flat ground! Honest! In Montreal (and the rest of Quebec, I think) the squirrels are the large friendly-fluffy Grey ones. They're pretty bold. Once, when I was eating lunch in front of the Otto-Maass Chemistry building at McGill's downtown campus, I looked down and noticed that a Grey squirrel had entered entirely inside my lunch bag. I've always wanted to pet a squirrel, so I was really, really, really tempted to close the bag and pick it up... Then the squirrel turned around, and I noticed just how GiGANTIC its sharp, very long, and very strong front *claws* were. I nixed my pet-a-pet idea pretty quick.

About the squirrel population in Canada... If I were to jump into my car and start driving west, by the time I hit Kingston Ontario, the squirrels become mainly the timorous Black ones. And I know that out West and in British Columbia, you see lots of Red Squirrels. All species of them are really cute.


> Brunnen-"and don't get me started about the time I saw a chipmunk"G

Heh. Come visit me at Slavery Lake sometime in the summer, and we could go run through the forest oogling grey squirrels, striped chipmunks, voles, button mice, leopard frogs, owls, bats, luna moths, ruby-throated hummingbirds, and maybe even shake hands with a raccoon.

Wolf "Really wants to pet a Pocket hedgehog sometime" spirit