How Hot Was It?...

I knew it seemed pretty hot this weekend, with plenty of sunshine pushing Saturday and Sunday highs above the 90 degree mark here at the house for the first time this year. So just how hot was it? Well, here's one of our deck squirrels making it clear that he thought it was just too darn hot...

And just so you don't think that I just draped a dead squirrel over the railing, I tapped on the glass to get the little guy's attention a few seconds later. He doesn't look all that excited, even though I'm only a few feet away--I think it was just too hot to care, even if you're a squirrel.

(We have no idea what happened to his tail, by the way. We don't give our squirrels poodle cuts as a general policy, but this one seems to have gone for that look nevertheless. None of the other squirrels have this distinctive tail plumage; every other squirrel has a full, bushy tail like... well, like a squirrel's tail! Whatever's going on here, it seems to be relatively permanent; we first noticed this little guy in late winter, and his tail looked the same back then. It hasn't grown out a bit in the ensuing months, which leads me to assume this is either his standard look or he's making some sort of squirrel lifestyle statement.)