A pair of American Red Squirrels lives in a tree on a neighbour’s property just on the other side of the property line with us, travels around and across our place to a property on the other side of us. We’re a large property with a condo and surface parking lot. I have now twice observed it making the journey, always using the exact same route.
It would be MUCH closer to cross the driveway and lawn but that is also a heavily traveled area by humans. It avoids that though it does cross the parking lot at the far end where fewer cars and fewer humans travel.
On May 6 2026, I caught some of its journey on camera. I can’t post video here but will post frames of key moments.
This Red Squirrel, as do all the other squirrels and birds around here, has the option of avoiding the parking lot altogether and running along the top of the fence that surrounds the far end of the parking lot. It does not take that option. That tells me it is not totally averse to the human environment. Put another way, the American Red Squirrel is capable of evaluating levels of travel by humans even though it probably does not count one-two-three like we do.