How does this sound for breakfast?
Shagbark hickory nut, mossycup oak acorn, bitternut hickory nut, pumpkin seeds, pine nuts, cashew and almond.
Hold the milk. Hold the flakes.
Then sweet potato, blueberries, green grapes, apple bits and button mushrooms.
That's the menu every evening when Sabrina the two-year-old northern flying squirrel chows down at her digs in Erin Mills. Yes, Sabrina has breakfast at night, because she's a nocturnal being.
Sabrina and her new playmate Scooter, a southern flying squirrel who arrived in Mississauga May 25, are “party animals” according to their owner, the inestimable Steve Patterson.
You remember Patterson. He's the guy who got caught in the Kafkaesque border snafu when he brought Sabrina into Canada without incident two years ago, then had to fight an expensive $30,000 rearguard legal action against the nincompoops at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency who tried to seize her and ignore provisions that allowed importation of rodents like Sabrina for educational purposes.
Speaking to Patterson yesterday after he made two presentations to Grade 7 students at Hazel McCallion Public School, a couple of things quickly became obvious: the self-taught biologist is still outraged at the audacity of bureaucrats who wanted to snatch the tiny squirrel away from him after he and Sabrina had just bonded. Second, he wants to put all that stuff behind him and get on with his real business of introducing city kids to the magnificent wild world out there.
In a captivating 90-minute presentation, students oohed and aahed as Sabrina demonstrated her amazing flying ability, yes, but Patterson also passionately pursued his personal campaign to end what he calls, “the nature deficit disorder in children.”
Here are some of the fascinating things that the students learned about Sabrina and Scooter, the nine-week-old, 44 gram (he's gained 4 grams already) squirrel who made just his second public appearance yesterday:
• if you've camped in Haliburton, chances are a flying squirrel has played one of their favourite games with you, called bounce off the tent.
• Patterson's personal research project in Grey and Bruce counties, where he's put up 400 nesting boxes, has proven for the first time that a squirrel has had two litters in one year, an important indicator of climate change.
• There are 43 species of flying squirrels, the largest of which lives in Kashmir and is four-feet long.
• Sabrina is potty-trained.
• Southern flying squirrels came to North America when the water dropped allowing them to use the Bering land bridge some 25 million years ago.
• If you drop a young, sightless squirrel, it will automatically spread its limbs to activate the flap of skin attached to its sides called the patagium, that allow it to glide down.
• Squirrels will form a gang in winter, find an abandoned woodpecker hole and cuddle up (and squabble) all season long to keep warm.
• They have a sweet tooth and often drowned in buckets in the old days until a better bucket was designed.
• Adding a little Sleeman's beer to the peanut butter and sunflower seeds in a squirrel trap is a good idea because it helps attract the keen-smelling rodents.
• You can lure a squirrel from his hole by banging a baseball bat on the base of a tree. The squirrel will poke his head out to see what the fuss is all about. If you put a butterfly net over the hole and hit the tree again, the squirrel will automatically leap out and be caught in the net.
• Owls, snakes, raccoons and house cats are among many predators.
• The presence of flying squirrels can be detected by looking at nut shells on the forest floor. They open shells in a unique way, creating a single, long elliptical hole.
• The squirrel's taste for exotic black truffles that live six inches underground is critical to the continued health of our forests. The squirrels eat the truffles and their waste spreads the spores around the forest floor. The fungi produce tiny web-like shoots that attach to tree roots, improving their ability to absorb water and nutrients and acting as a barrier to soil-borne diseases.
Asked what prompted his fascination with the species, the 53-year-old father of two says,“once you've held a litter of baby flying squirrels in your hand, they get in your blood.”
The species does seem to be in the Patterson family's blood. Much to dad's delight, youngest son Jesse, a graduate of Sheridan Park Public School and Erindale Secondary School, is pursuing his master's of science in forestry at the University of Toronto. His research involves - surprise, surprise — the effects of habitat fragmentation on Glaucomys sabrinus, the northern flying squirrel.
“The nut doesn't fall far from the tree,” says the elder Patterson.
The computer consultant has established an excellent website, www.flyingsquirrels.com that tells you all you need to know about the rodents, including Sabrina's secret passion, a weakness that seduces many a human: chocolate.