Thanks for reading my blog. I hope you are having a really good day.
One time when Katie and I were hiking around Tallulah Gorge near her house... ok, Katie was hiking, and I was in her backpack. Anyway, we looked a little ways off the trail and saw a bobcat climbing up a pine tree. That's not unusual in the North Georgia mountains, but at the very top of the tree, out on the stub of a limb, was a squirrel happily eating some pine nuts it had gathered in its cheeks. "Oh dear!" exclaimed Katie "that poor squirrel is trapped. There is no way it can escape that bobcat."
I told her not to worry, the squirrel wasn't trapped. The bobcat was climbing the tree for nothing.
"But there is no way the squirrel can get by the bobcat down the tree, and it's as far up the tree as it can go" she said. I told her the squirrel wasn't worried at all, to look how calmly he is eating the nuts while watching the bobcat get closer. “That's what I mean," said Katie. “The bobcat is almost to him. He can't escape!”
"Just watch" I told her. Just then, as the bobcat reached the branch where the squirrel was sitting, the squirrel launched itself into the air, spread its front and back paws and the folds of skin between those paws just spread out like a parachute. The squirrel glided 150 feet to the boughs of a big oak tree where it swooped up to make the softest of landings.
"Wow, that was beautiful" said Katie. "I know, it really was. That's because that is a flying squirrel" I said.
I knew it was a flying squirrel because it was smaller than a regular squirrel, and had a rounder nose, and a flat tail it uses to guide itself while in flight. It doesn't actually fly, though, it just glides. But flying squirrels have been known to go up to 300 feet in the air if the wind is right.
It's good to know that you are safe when faced with what otherwise might be danger. It's kind of like being with your parents in a bad storm. You know they will take care of you even though by yourself you might not know the safest place to go.
Keep your chin up!
Robert P. Rabbit