It's A Good Thing They're Cute

As many of you have already read, I feed the squirrels on my deck rail every day. I am nominally feeding the birds, but I'm sure that the majority of the shelled sunflower seeds get eaten by my squirrels. Sometimes I have as many as nine on my deck at once, but with that many they tend to put more energy into martial arts maneuvers than eating. One morning, this past weekend, as I was going out to feed them, I noticed that one of the squirrels was climbing my red crepe myrtle, which you can see behind the railing, between the two squirrels in the foreground. You can observe that there are no flowers visible in this photo. The squirrel that climbed it was chewing them off! I had thought that the deer didn't like crepe myrtles, so I had wondered what had been happening to them. A couple of days later I saw a squirrel just lean over from the deck rail in order to chew. Believe me, I had a few choice words for them as I examined their dining area.
I looked down and saw some of the blossoms on the ground.

I went down the ramp and saw that they had dragged some flowers down there. That squirrel sure looks guilty to me.
I took this photo two years ago, before any of my furry friends had discovered it. Notice that they are still on the tree. It's a really pretty color, so it's really a shame. My mom came by and sprayed with Liquid Fence and I haven't seen them touch it since, although they probably aren't as interested now that the flowers are gone. It's a good thing those little bastards are so cute.