It was sunny, but cold winter morning in St. Louis. Robin and I were 
preparing for our Sunday morning ritual of 99 cents bowling. We were eating that great American breakfast of cereal and milk before we ventured out in -10 degrees (Celsius – that is) weather. She had offered to fix some hot oatmeal or cream of wheat, but I had declined as we were running a little late.
Robin noticed them first as she was sitting closest to the window. The backyard was just full of squirrels acting…well squirrelly. There must have between 7 and 10 squirrels running across the yard, through the tree limbs, chasing each other. From our warm perspective it looked like they were having an enormous amount of fun.
There is an old redbud tree close to the house, and several of the cavorting squirrels had chosen this tree to run up and down and through. Suddenly, one pair stopped. Then they did the “deed”, right there before us, out in the open, directly on the tree limb at our eye level. It was over in no time, unless you count the cavorting and chasing as foreplay. The male then jumped from the tree. He was turned almost facing the house, but at a slight angle to his left. Both forepaws went down to his nether region, and he began a two-handed operation that for all the world looked like masturbation. Robin and I were shocked, amazed, and giggling like 7th graders in sex education class. I have some vague memory of him licking his paws when he got done.
This set me to wondering about a few things. First, what is the gestation period for squirrels? What is their mating season? Do they really do what we thought we had just witnessed?
I rushed to my laptop, clicked the Google icon on my links bar, and typed in “squirrel mating season”. Several sites came up and I chose this one, Squirrel Place – Squirrel Facts Turns out the gestation period for gray squirrels is around 60 days. The mating season is mid December to mid January. Most of the squirrel pups are born in early spring.
Next I typed “squirrel” followed by “masturbation” into Google and came up with a multitude of sites. Because there were so many and I found no listing with Snopes.com, I am making the assumption they are not spoofs. I chose Why squirrels masturbate, or Some thoughts on nuts. Turns out there are a lot of serious people that have given serious time to seriously considering the reasons that squirrels masturbate so seriously. Theories range from it feels good to an adaptive behavior that helps control the spread of sexually transmitted disease in the scurry (a group of squirrels — now you know).
Amazing what you can learn by just looking out your window on a sunny, but cold winter morn.
that is totally Hysterically funny!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Gerbils engage in the same activity. How would I know you might ask? In my youthful teenage abode, the gerbil habitat was eye level with my bunk bed. They are also active in more ways than one at night.