Real Elves Lived on Our Shelves

by Hazel Russell Bird

In the old fairy tales, whenever anyone rapped loudly three times on a hollow tree, an elf or a gnome was likely to pop out, smiling disarmingly and asking of what service he might be. Today in south Florida a few raps on a hollow tree often produce results just as exciting. Try it some time, and don't be surprised if several furry, bright-eyed creatures, as charming as elves and vastly more amusing, poke their heads out of a hole near the top to see who's knocking at their door.

Hollow trees are the favorite nesting places of flying squirrels. And flying squirrels are fairly common in the vicinity of Miami and the Redlands, though this fact isn't too well known by humans, because of the squirrels' preference for night life and consequent shunning of daylight.

When several years ago my family and I set up a sort of camp home in a tract of pineland in south Dade County, we anticipated making the acquaintance of many intriguing birds, insects, reptiles, amphibians and mammals such as we had known while vagabonding in Everglades National Park and on Key Largo. But we never expected to play hosts to a family of dispossessed flying squirrels.

The squirrels' first home was inadvertently damaged by my husband one day as he and I strolled across the rocky land of our new estate. He happened to be carrying a stick in his hand and, in passing a dead tree trunk standing upright, he idly struck it a sharp blow. A section of the top-possibly two-toppled to the ground. Two tiny furred forms fell with it. But we scarcely had time to note the pert, inquisitive faces dominated by huge, liquid eyes, the silky grayish-brown coats and flattened tails, and the fur-covered membranes that formed "wings" between the hind and front legs, before the creatures had scrambled back up what was left of the tree and scurried into its hollow interior.

"Flying squirrels!" my husband exclaimed, "That explains the mystery of the chewed pine cones." (webmaster's note - flyers do not eat pine or spruce cone seeds as a rule)

For days we had been puzzling about what animal with scissor sharp teeth could have been responsible for the many mutilated cones strewn here and there about the place.

"I wonder what the poor squirrels will do, now that half their house is gone?" I asked.

What they did was very sensible and very simple. They moved across into another nearby dead tree with a convenient woodpecker hole in it, and would poke their heads out of this aperture to stare at us quizzically whenever we knocked sharply on the wood below. Then, it became necessary to bulldoze a firebreak around our land, and though the big machine was routed around the flying squirrels' home, the shaking of the adjacent ground caused the old rotted tree to fall over and break to pieces.

We were saddened by the incident. We felt we had betrayed, probably even killed, our woodsy friends. Soon, however, we learned we were wasting our sympathy. Far from being dead, the squirrels had escaped without a scratch. And this time they had apparently decided that we, who had done them out of two homes in quick succession, should now furnish them accommodations for the rest of the season. For, presently, certain curious scratching noises issuing from behind a pile of manuscripts and magazines on a shelf in the little building we call the Studio, were followed by fleeting appearances of shining brown eyes above twitching whiskers, of soft fur coats and whisking tails. Now and again as we crossed the yard after dark, we would catch glimpses of silhouetted forms gliding earthward from the top of a tall pine near the path. And then we found the crack beside a rafter in the Studio that the squirrels had enlarged to form a means of going in and out.

"They seem to have taken up with us," my husband beamed. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could tame them, make real pets of them?"

I nodded but made certain mental reservations. Squirrels were rodents, weren't they? And hadn't another rodent, the ingratiating Pauline, a deer mouse who had lived with us for a time in the Everglades National Park, once cut a big hole in the middle of my husband's best shirt to line a nest for her offspring?

For better or worse, however, the two little squirrels were our tenants. Of course we wanted to feed them. Peanut butter, with which we had successfully tickled the palates of many birds and animals in the past, seemed the logical fare. But neither the butter nor raw peanuts, in or out of the shell, pleased the squirrels. They were even scornful of English walnuts, but at last became intrigued by proffered pecans. Indeed, they developed such an.addiction for these delicacies that they would venture from their nest even in broad daylight when we called them and rattled a few pecans in our hands.

We named our friends Buster and Bobo, and in due time Buster became so tame he would sit on my hand and allow me to stroke him as one does a kitten. He reminded me strongly of a chipmunk, perhaps because of that band of dark brown fur edging each "wing." These wings are not flapped like a bird's when the animal is in flight, but held taut like the wings of a glider. The flat tail serves admirably as a rudder. (webmaster's note - this last statement is not really true)

Three other squirrels eventually came to join the first two, and after dark the Studio was a lively place. I frequently slept on a built-in bunk against one wall, and no sooner would I extinguish my lamp and settle my head on my pillow than . . . scramble, scrumble, plop! . . . a squirrel or two would swoop down upon me from a shelf above, and begin nosing my hands in search of nuts. I learned not to give them more than three apiece at any one time. They would sit along a rafter, sometimes three or four in a row in identical positions like figures on a woodland frieze, and, each grasping a nut daintily in his paws, dine until three apiece were consumed. Beyond this their appetites seldom went. But they would return again and again for nuts, accepting as long as any were handed out, and storing the surplus behind books, under various movable objects and inside convenient receptacles. One of their favorite hiding places was a gallon tin can with an opening for a screw top less than an inch and a half in diameter. How the creatures managed to climb into so small a hole was not such a mystery as how they got themselves out again after the nuts were cached!

During their stay with us, the flying squirrels were never once guilty of cutting up a Sunday shirt, but how they did love buttons! No jacket could be left hanging in the Studio without their neatly snipping the buttons off and hiding them. Sometimes they would leave a nut in the pocket to even things up, sometimes not. And they never essayed any button snatching when anyone was around, though I have seen all five of them cavorting over my husband's person at one time, dodging in and out of his pockets in search of tidbits.

In the end they did learn to eat peanuts, which was gratifying from two standpoints. Not only were peanuts cheaper than pecans, but they also made less noise when the squirrels rolled them around on the shelves at night. Nothing is much less conducive to peaceful slumber than the sound of squirrels bowling with pecans at two o'clock in the morning.

Flying squirrels were the cleanest pets we ever had. They never dirtied up their little nest or any part of the studio. For the most part they got along amiably with each other, but occasionally there would be family squabbles, when much shrill squealing indicated that ears were being bitten. (We knew it was ears because we could see the evidence when the squabblers emerged).

Our squirrels were never observed to drink water, unless you count the time my husband saw one sucking moisture that had gathered on a bit of metal in the Studio. Later we read that flying squirrels in captivity drink freely of water and milk but that in their wild state they seem not to require liquid. It is our belief that they are dew drinkers.

We can recommend them unreservedly as pets. But if you acquire a family of them for your very own, don't make the mistake we did of thinking that everybody will love them as wholeheartedly as you do. A guest of ours from the north spent three gruesome nights in the Studio being pounced on and galloped over by the little darlings before we discovered that she was mortally afraid of rats and mice, and that, in her books, flying squirrels were merely rats with wings!Another word of caution. Or rather of exhortation. Don't just sit around expecting to be as lucky as we were. Comparatively few human habitations are voluntarily invaded by flying squirrels. If you truly want some for pets, get out in the woods and begin rapping on hollow trees. Let your friends smile and tap their foreheads significantly. Tell them that knocking on wood has always been accepted as a harmless superstition, even among the intelligensia. And when you find what you are looking for, when several winsome furry mischief makers have become a part of your life, I'll wager a pecan and two peanuts you'll discover you've rounded up a number of new members for the Tree-Tapping Society of South Florida.

From "Everglades Natural History", Vol. 1, No. 2 - June, 1953 - pp. 47-50.

Webmaster's note - this article is over 50 years old and there are several errata contained within the text. Additionally, it is illegal in many states to (and all of Canada) to a) take animals from the wild and b) keep flying squirrels as pets.