Found Squirrels: Natural History Squirrels

Over Thanksgiving weekend B and I went to Washington, DC, to give thanks for tater tot hotdish with some friends of our down there. We stopped by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and it was a dead squirrel bonanza in there!

Some of you may recall that my record of taking decent pictures of living squirrels is spotty at best. (They move really fast, especially when you're chasing them. It's not my fault.) Turns out taking pictures of dead squirrels is way easier.

See, there's no way I could've captured an image of a chipmunk like that in the wild. But as long as someone kills it, stuffs it, and sets it up for me I have no problem. I sense that there are photojournalism awards headed my way!

Of course, sometimes they set them up in very strange positions. Like the prairie dog above (for the slow kids in class, let me reiterate: a prairie dog is a type of ground squirrel). What is that prairie dog doing? Worshiping the sun god?

But I've saved the best for last...

OH MY GOD IT'S A FLYING SQUIRREL ATTACK! DUCK AND COVER, DUCK AND COVER! How would you feel if you saw that fuzzy little missile headed straight toward your head in the forest, huh? You would be terrified, as would I. But don't worry, it's dead, just like the rest of the squirrels in this post.

Wow, I just realized that this is probably the first post in this blog that has pictures of all three types of squirrels!