The Story Of Tripod

This is the story of Tripod, a northern flying squirrel who visited our feeding station situated somewhere in Bruce County, Ontario, Canada on one early spring evening in 2004. It was a quiet, windless night at our tree house feeding station, surrounded by old-growth eastern white cedar and beside a babbling brook. The usual suspects had already arrived, the family group of flyers that we had been observing all winter long. We've been observing flying squirrels at this location since 1999, and thought we had pretty much seen about every anomaly we could imagine. Until tonight, that is. We observed some odd movement from the darker reaches of our eyesight, deep into the forest. The movement got closer, but we could not yet make out anything of interest, or concern. Likely just our imagination, we thought. Or just one of the flyers looking for a caching spot. We thought wrong. Minutes later, Tripod appeared. We each had to take a second look. There, not one metre from us, was the first living, handicapped, adult flying squirrel we had ever seen. Not your average squirrel indeed! Completely blind in his left eye, Tripod was also burdened with a completely useless right  leg that was turned outward and flopped around like it was made from Silly Putty. Tripod could not glide. Not a chance. Imagine a flying squirrel who can't glide! Locomotion was achieved via short hops from branch to branch. Climbing up or down a tree trunk was not easy for Tripod. What a trouper! We surmised that Tripod was part of this group, and he was certainly not shunned by the other flyers at the tree house that night. Perhaps we had not seem him before because he had previously just watched from the sidelines until he felt we were posing no threat. Or perhaps he had been found and "adopted" by our family group. We have no way of ever knowing. He proved very trusting and eventually made his way, with some difficulty, to the feeding platform and helped himself to a buffet meal of black oil sunflower seed and white oak acorns. No problem there! We estimated Tripod's age at around one year, based upon skull shape. It also stands to reason that a flying squirrel with this much of a physical disadvantage would likely not live two or more years anyway. We felt it was a combination of luck and smarts that Tripod was alive at all! But what an inspiration! Many flying squirrels don't make it to their first birthday. Most flying squirrels don't live any longer than 4 years - they get eaten, a lot! But here comes Tripod to show us that, against all odds, you can have everything against you and still be successful. The will to survive is all-powerful. We went to bed that night with recharged spirits, and taking comfort in the fact that perhaps we were helping make a tough life a little more bearable by having Tripod dine at our table. Alas, we had to leave for civilization the next morning. We have been at the tree house feeding station scores of times since then, and have never seen Tripod again. So when we think we have troubles, we just think of Tripod and all that he overcame to survive over a year in very harsh and unforgiving conditions. Our troubles seem so small in comparison. Thank you, Tripod, for allowing us a glimpse at a life so precious. Note: we apologize for the poor quality photos - we had only our digital camera, and these cameras are not the greatest for capturing nature at night. Flaring is an issue with most consumer point and shoot digital cameras (even digital SLR's have this problem, although to a lesser extent). Film cameras are still the best option for nighttime nature photography.