Margaret Rican of Seattle is having a hard time this year, as her Christmas lights keep disappearing. A squirrel has been making off with the bulbs one by one. The brazen thief pulls off his heists right in front of her sometimes, while other capers are recorded from a distance. She uploaded a compilation of his trips to chew off and abscond with the bulbs one by one.
Is he trying to decorate his nest with the colorful bulbs? HuffPo asked an expert.
“This kind of behavior is reported each year as squirrels see the bulbs as similar to an acorn or fruit,” John Koprowski, a University of Arizona professor and noted squirrel expert, told The Huffington Post. “While hard to know if this indicates a difficult winter for food, this behavior is likely just the result of being an industrious squirrel and caching a bounty of potential food to be used over the course of the winter.”
Koprowski says that squirrels usually bury more food than they really need for the winter, and even forget where some of it is, so he should be fine.