Squirrels. You either love them or you hate them.

I find them entertaining and a little bit crazy. They haven’t chewed my cable lines yet, so they are OK at this point.

I find that by feeding them separately, they tend to stay off my bird feeders. Overall.

Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer who worked on the Curiosity rover, took a good look at squirrels during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Like many people, he took to bird watching while he was homebound. He found that the squirrels kept eating the food from the feeders no matter what he did.

Then the engineer part of him took over, and he began to create an obstacle course that the squirrels would have to go through to get to the ultimate prize, a big stash of walnuts (Mark determined walnuts were their favorites). The squirrels learned how to run the obstacle course and did reach the walnuts.

I have seen the little guys hang from their toes, jump from a bush or a fence, and do whatever they need to do to get to the food. They are nothing if not persistent.

I discovered that there are around 280 different species of squirrels on every continent except Antarctica and Australia. And apparently, India has squirrels that grow up to 3 feet long.

Wouldn’t that be fun in the backyard?

I missed it this year, but Jan. 21 is National Squirrel Appreciation Day. Did you send them a card?

As much as the squirrels hang around my house, I only had one instance where one got inside my house, getting in around a window air conditioner I had set up.

He ran around inside my living room a little bit before sitting up on top of my computer monitor. But after I opened a window for him, he eventually went back outside.

They are relatively well-behaved around my home, until the days when I am out of walnuts and they climb up on my windowsill, paws outstretched, looking in the window as if to say, “Well, where’s the food?”