A Squirrel, a Chipmunk and a Fox

I thought I'd share a couple of photos of a Colorado squirrel that I recently took while on vacation.  When I spotted this guy, I immediately noticed how different he looks from the squirrels in my neighborhood.  Dare I say that this guy is much cuter?  Not to offend my local squirrels, but come on, this guy puts my local squirrels to shame.  He has those great highlighted eyes and nose that just pop out at you.  Also his general shape is rounder and fluffier . . . maybe I can relate to that since I'm round and fluffy! 

I was surprised that this guy let me get within about 4 feet of him and didn't budge.  Very cute.

Now on to our chipmunk encounter.  Le Husband and I were skiing down a trail that had tall pine trees lining either side, it was bright and sunny, beautifully groomed snow and I was in the zone . . .  when out of nowhere comes one of the biggest chipmunks I've ever seen.  He was hauling ass (sorry but there's no better way to put it) right across the ski slope carrying a pine cone in his mouth!  Now I'm sure you're thinking that the altitude must have been messing with my head, but I am totally serious.  I came really close to running the guy over and immediately stopped and burst out laughing.  Le Husband stopped immediately as well and said "Did you see that?!!"  I've never experienced any local wild life on the slopes and of course Le Husband was not filming this particular ski run so we don't even have video evidence.  Apparently he was late for an important date on the other side of the slope!

My last encounter with Colorado wildlife (other than the human variety) was spotting a beautiful and large fox on the hillside directly outside of our condo.  Of course at the time I spotted this fox, I was on the phone with this lovely older gentleman who owned the condo we were staying in.  He had called to see if we were enjoying our visit and was in the middle of a story about how much his grandchildren loved staying at the condo.  My fellow vacationers were involved in various acts of watching TV, reading or looking at their computer when I began to frantically wave my free arm and point at the hill outside the condo.  After determining that I was indeed trying to communicate with them and was not having some bazaar seizure, they all gathered around the sliding glass door to check out the impressive fox.  Of course by the time I was able to politely extricate myself from the phone call, the fox was long gone.  Did anyone think to grab my camera and snap a photo . . . nope!  You'll just have to trust me that he was one very good looking fox!

xoxo