The Squirrel Who Loved Its Floofy Tail

It's been a rather squirrelly time on the deck. The other day, a skinny, scrawny, little squirrel showed up and put on quite a show. It ran all around and hopped from thing to thing. I could even swear it binkied, just like a rabbit!

Then on this particular morning, TWO squirrels showed up, neither one the scrawny little fella we saw before. The first one was quite a bit more robust, and then there was this one, somewhere in size between the two prior squirrels. Let's call this one: the squirrel who loved its tail.

The sun was just starting to arrive on the deck, and the squirrel sought out the sunniest spots to bathe. "What does it think this is, some kind of squirrel spa?" asked my husband with false indignation, followed by a snicker. Dexter watched with rapt attention, his tail twitching.

The squirrel did some general fur maintenance, and then it licked its favorite body part: its tail! It sat on the left side of the deck and preened its tail from underneath, holding it in place with a single paw, the tail extended like a furry feather.

Then the squirrel hopped over to the right side of the deck and commenced a full-on assault on the tail. It moved it to the left, it moved it to the right. It held down its fuzzy tail carefully from every angle. So much tail to wash, so little time!

Then it grabbed the tail with both paws and stuck its nose right in. Ahh, the sweet smell of freshly washed fur! This was my final shot of the squirrel displaying its amazingly clean and floofy tail proudly in the morning sun.

The soundtrack: Queens of the Stone Age, with If I Had a Tail.