YOU get a home, and YOU get a home...!
Dec. 6th, 2025 10:12 amTwo pieces of good news, one expected and one not:
Creating environments and then watching them get used is absolutely and 100% my jam. Even when it involves talking to HVAC people more than I'd usually choose to, but that's for another post.
- I have tenants for the new condo! Nothing's signed yet but everyone wants to sign. I had two options, and I picked the pair of people who had a) lived together before and b) had owned a home before. Ex-homeowners make the best tenants. It's also the case that the ones I chose are the ones who're definitely going to use the back yard (for their small, middle-aged dog), and there's some petty pleasure in that, given how hard I pushed for a commonly-owned yard. Oh and one of them is a mechanical engineer who likes to learn how things work, but there was actually a mechanical engineer in each of my possible pairs of tenants so that wasn't a decider. (ETA: these folks flew home, measured their furniture and got a whole lot less excited. So oops, and maybe there'll be better news later.)
- I have tenants in my SQUIRREL NESTING BOX, omg, squeeeee! I saw one go into it yesterday morning, carrying leaves, and immediately got very excited and ran off to get wool and alpaca roving from
apfelsingail. This morning, more activity between about 9AM and 10AM, with the one Very Responsible Grownup continuing to carry up batches of leaves. Then, incredibly, a juvenile reappeared, one that we'd seen a few days ago but not since, and it went into the box too, and we got pictures of all this. Then a third squirrel went in there at 10 and so they have remained. (Or actually -- the young'un just poked its nose out -- but mostly.) The warm fuzzies could not get any more literal! I've been hoping for this ever since installing the box in spring, and I guess it appeals more when the temperature drops, because there they are now. Curled up inside, with straw and leaves.
Creating environments and then watching them get used is absolutely and 100% my jam. Even when it involves talking to HVAC people more than I'd usually choose to, but that's for another post.
Yay!
Date: 2025-12-06 11:50 pm (UTC)Around here, mine build their nests high up in the forks of trees. I took pictures recently and in just one cluster of trees there are at least 4 squirrel flets.
Re: Yay!
Date: 2025-12-08 03:10 am (UTC)And nobody had built such a structure in the tree I can see from my window, which is on the 3rd floor in the back of a house, so I bought a squirrel nesting box from https://nuts-about-squirrels.com/ and had it installed. I'm really happy to finally see residents. :-)
Re: Yay!
Date: 2025-12-08 03:31 am (UTC)I think it's neat to have so many different special words for some types of nest. Like badger sett and beaver lodge and so on. But most have only one special term, and otherwise it's "nest."
>>And nobody had built such a structure in the tree I can see from my window, which is on the 3rd floor in the back of a house, so I bought a squirrel nesting box <<
Go you! When the weather gets cold, windy, or wet then squirrels start looking for shelter and will investigate a box.