The eastern gray squirrel is the most underestimated animal in your yard.
Everybody knows what it looks like — gray back, white belly, tail like a feather duster, 16 to 20 inches of pure bird-feeder menace. But here's what it's actually doing out there:
It's running cons. If a gray squirrel thinks it's being watched, it'll dig a hole, mime dropping the nut, and pat the dirt down — while the real nut stays hidden in its mouth. Scientists say this points to something like theory of mind: the squirrel understands another animal has a mind that can be fooled.
It climbs down trees head-first. Almost no other mammal can do this. It rotates its hind feet 180 degrees so the claws point backward and grip the bark on the way down.
It buries thousands of nuts every season — and forgets where a lot of them are. Every oak in your neighborhood started as somebody's lost lunch. Squirrels are accidentally responsible for entire forests.
Its teeth never stop growing. If it didn't gnaw constantly, its own teeth would kill it.
They don't hibernate. They build leaf nests called dreys in the forks of trees. Only about one in four makes it through the first year. And the black ones you sometimes see aren't a different species — they're just gray squirrels wearing a dark coat.
Next time one's yelling at you from the fence, remember: you're looking at a paranoid, deceptive, head-first-tree-descending forest planter with power tools for teeth. Show some respect.