Vent: My attempt to forge a tiny decorative dragon ended with a very confused squirrel.

I was trying to make a small dragon figure for a garden stake, using some leftover mild steel and a torch, but I must have gotten the scale wrong because it came out looking like a weird, lumpy acorn. A squirrel in my yard actually ran off with it, tried to bury it, then just sat there staring at the spot like its world view was broken. Has anyone else had a project get totally misinterpreted by local wildlife?

4 comments

4 Comments

ruby_henderson3616d ago

That "slow, confused back-away" is the best. I read about a guy who made a concrete garden toad, and the real toads in his yard would all sit in a circle around it, just still and silent. It's like they have a committee meeting to figure out if it's a threat or a new friend. Your squirrel having an existential crisis over a lumpy acorn dragon is honestly a better review than most art critics give.

jade_jenkins1mo ago

Guess my dragon was so bad it broke a squirrel's whole system. I once welded a little bird feeder that pigeons treated like a modern art sculpture they were afraid of. Maybe we're just bad at animal communication?

jakejones1mo agoTop Commenter

So what did the squirrel actually do when it saw your dragon... just freeze up and stare? My neighbor's cat once saw a garden gnome and did this slow, confused back-away for like five minutes.

davis.noah1mo ago

Honestly @jakejones, I just stayed super still and it eventually got bored and left. Worked for a possum on my porch last week too.