Feeling squirrelly?

On a clear, warm, glorious fall afternoon, I biked down Cobbetts Lane, past stately maples, the old lima bean field, an elegant 19th-century home and a well-fattened grey squirrel crouched on the edge of the woods.

He saw me. I saw him.

He darted out, passing under my bike just behind the front wheel. We were both uninjured, but I was shaken, unlike the squirrel, who seemed delighted to have cheated death again.  

Squirrels are nut-eating, spoke-tangling, traffic-stopping facts of life on Shelter Island and they are everywhere. They swing like acrobats from our birdfeeders, and make our dogs go crazy. Are there more of them than last year or fewer?

Who cares? We have to deal with them.

I checked in with some veteran squirrel-watchers during a recent lunch at The Islander, one of whom said his brother-in-law ended up in the hospital with a dislocated shoulder when a squirrel got entangled in the spokes of his bike and brought them both down hard.

I’m really glad I didn’t know that when I had my bike vs. squirrel encounter.

Tim Purtell and Robin Drake’s squirrel saga began with a jar of unsalted peanuts that Tim deployed in the yard to distract the squirrels from eating the buds on the viburnum bushes. “They would sit five or six feet apart and eat their peanuts,” Tim said. “It was a big success.”

The viburnum looked great, but Tim and Robin were buying peanuts five or six jars at a time.

“Sometimes the squirrels would throw themselves against the glass door to tell us they wanted peanuts,” Tim said. “If we came out to eat at the picnic table they gathered around our legs. One built a nest on our trellis.”

Suddenly, Tim and Robin had a roommate. “One day I heard something and called out, ‘Rob are you O.K.?’” Tim said. “The squirrel was in the hall. I got her out, and discovered she had chewed through a screen.”

A squirrel who chewed a hole in the screen next to the dining table was discovered in the middle of the basement floor, eating a nut. This time Robin lured the squirrel upstairs and outdoors with peanuts.

Then, during a visit from relatives, a 4-year-old in the living room watching his iPad was joined by the squirrel, who made itself comfortable in a pile of the child’s toys.

When Tim walked in he found boy and squirrel immersed in their worlds, just a few feet apart. It was then that Robin and Tim determined that in spite of the high temperatures and sultry days, they had to close their windows and doors during the hottest part of the season to encourage the squirrels to move on.

Now, the oaks are putting out acorns and the squirrels have switched to organic food. Will they visit again? Maybe, but Tim and Robin learned never to feed squirrels.

Reasonable people can disagree on the question of whether to apply the brakes when squirrels dart into the road. Kiki Boucher brakes for squirrels when conditions permit, even if it means the ruin of her baked goods.

With a freshly-baked tomato tart and a bottle of champagne in the back seat, she made her way down West Neck Road to a friend’s birthday celebration when a squirrel crossed in front of her car. “I slammed on the brakes,” she said. “It ran between my tires, but the bottle of champagne rolled off the seat and crushed the tart.” 

The Island has no greater animal lover than Patricia Anzalone, which makes driving hard for her when the squirrels get frisky. After a recent drive through a wooded area, she was deeply distressed.

“Squirrels throwing themselves in front of my car,” she said. “They wanted to die, running out in front of my car. There must have been 15 of them.”

Doug Sherrod is squarely in the camp of those who won’t swerve to avoid squirrels. “I confess that if I see a squirrel run into the road, I do not hit the brakes,” he said. “And if I ever hit one, and the meat is salvageable, I’m going to skin it and make it into Brunswick Stew.”

I had to look up the definition of Brunswick Stew, which is best described by Roy Blount Jr.: “Brunswick Stew is what happens when small mammals carrying ears of corn fall into barbecue pits.” Stew seems like a reasonable solution. But as a hunter, Doug knows how to field-dress a squirrel, a skill most of us lack.

Squirrels visit Linda Betjeman’s bird feeder so regularly that she’s looked into a long-range water pistol she could aim like a sniper from the kitchen window. When she spied a young squirrel hanging upside down from the feeder facing away from her, she snuck up to the squirrel, who was still hanging upside down eating.

“I touched his behind, and he went absolutely berserk,” Linda said. “Jumped and did a triple flip before landing. He thought twice about hanging from my feeder without his trousers on.”

James Dawson and Roz Dimon have an acrobatic gym for squirrels just outside Roz’s studio with no fewer than five bird-feeders designed and built by Jim.

Each feeder is raised and lowered with a system of pulleys and ropes that make it challenging for squirrels to reach, in spite of their well-known ability to jump a lateral distance of eight feet. The most successful of these feeders Jim fashioned from a case that once held fishing rods.

It is light, has an integrated funnel for filling, and holds a large volume of bird seed. He should definitely patent the thing. Nearby hangs a feeder that looks like something the Flying Wallendas would enjoy; a Droll Yankee feeder hung ten feet from the nearest tree, at the pivot point of a seesaw, with suet feeders suspended from each end.

Even the birds have trouble getting to it.