The Squirrel Nests

There are a lot of trees in our backyard with lots of nuts and lots of squirrels. Our trees are full of squirrel's nest too. It's actually fun to sit in the yard and watch the squirrels make their nests. They are actually called dreys and they are usually a large messy round ball leaves and twigs they put together high in a tree near the trunk or in forks of branches. 

Just today I went out in the yard and counted six dreys just in our trees. There would have been more in the tree Pat next door recently had cut down. There were always two or three nests up in that tree next to our house. And then there is the big catawba tree in next door in Mark's backyard. There are usually several squirrel's nest in that tree and that is why I'm writing about this now. We have all those nests up there in the trees every year but this year was different because

Mark decided he didn't want one of the nests that was closest to the house and was actually just outside his bedroom window. He began a campaign to chase the squirrels out of his tree. He started with a hose squirting directly on the nests but the squirrels persisted. Then he used a tree lopper attached to a pole to extend the reach and pushed the nest out of the tree. The squirrels kept coming back.

I've been watching the squirrels rebuilding their nest using those big catawba leaves. For every leaf that makes it to the nest they drop a couple more on the ground under the nest. It's a big mess.