In the United States, a motorist saw his vehicle transformed into a pantry for winter by a squirrel.The animal had crowded near the motor grass in quantity and many nuts!
A story that has become viral
On October 8, 2019, a Chris Persic resident in Pennsylvania (US) is the author of a successful publication on Facebook. It has also become viral to the point of being relayed in several media across the Atlantic as CBS News. In the photos, it is possible to observe a car engine filled with a thick mixture of grass and nuts.
Chris Persic said he was warned by his wife to identify noise and a burning smell from the engine. It took an hour to remove everything and clean, but the vehicle was not damaged. According to the couple, this reserve contained about 200 nuts!
A potential danger
It is well known that squirrels stock up on nuts in anticipation of winter. The goal is to spend the season without missing food. Thus, they are looking for an ideal place to store their loot, that is to say the most sheltered from other animals. It is true that the space under the hood of a car seemed attractive, but the squirrel would have done better to choose a vehicle abandoned!
Joking aside, this improvised pantry is not safe. Indeed, Chris Persic said that if the grass was drier, it could have caught fire! Thus, the couple advises people parking their vehicles outside to lift their hood from time to time.
The art of storage
In recent years, some studies have focused on the behavior of squirrels in the face of food storage. A duo of researchers from the Department of Psychology at the University of California at Berkeley (USA) made an astonishing discovery. Indeed, these animals are able to carefully sort their provisions according to their variety. Moreover, they scatter them in several hiding places, undoubtedly to better find oneself there. In short, the squirrel is a true model of organization!
A team of researchers from the University of Zurich (Switzerland) was interested in how this animal is able to find its hiding places. The leaders of the study used a GPS device to record squirrel movements. According to them, animals use the position of the sun at a given moment of the day as a basic rule to find their bearings when looking for a place to hide their food. However, squirrels had a strong tendency to return to the scene 24 hours after hiding the food, surely to carry out an audit.
