South Dakota: Squirrels!

Yay, finally we've come to the South Dakota post about squirrels! But first, I do have to give you this photo, a lovely picture of a bison. Yes, we saw many bison on our trip to South Dakota. I even ate some bison. And while they may be tasty, they sure are big, ugly creatures. This guys was right on the side of the road somewhere in Custer State Park.

The other major animal component of our trip, as I mentioned a few days ago, was the prairie dog. If you are reading this and you do not know that a prairie dog is actually a type of squirrel, well, then you obviously haven't had the good fortune to hear me read out loud from my book of squirrel facts. And I feel sorry for you.

These little ground squirrels were featured back in my post about the Badlands, and we saw a ton of them again at Custer State Park. These guys weren't nearly as friendly as the ones we met before (probably in large part because we did not approach them with food), but they were still adorable. This little guy even struck a pose for me!

Next, we drove on the Needles Highway and stopped at a few viewpoints. At one in particular I wandered off from the group and ran into this delighful little chipmunk, who didn't really want me to take his picture. I had to scamper up some rocks to catch him, and this picture is as close as I got.

Can you see him in there? He's just a little brown speck. Oh, okay, I'll enlarge the little guy and post him here again. I can always use an excuse for an extra squirrel picture on my blog.

Simply adorable! I've always said, if I were going to be a squirrel I would probably be a ground squirrel. (Yes, chipmunks are ground squirrels. Yes, I learned this from my squirrel fact book. No, you can't borrow it, but maybe you should go read the squirrel article on Wikipedia or something if you're confused by this ground squirrel thing.)