Singing Squirrel

This small, slender prey creature is a mix of squirrel, bird, and digging behavior. It is said to be the offspring of a squirrel and a songbird. Whether this somehow happened or if it's simply a legend is unknown.

Lifespan: Ten years (if they're really lucky. Most are eaten before their third year.)   /  Diet: Omnivorous  /  Rarity: Uncommon

Animal concept created by meixiaotian of Sverige

Anatomy
The singing squirrel is longer than a normal squirrel, with long, silky brown fur. It has skinny legs and a sharp, inflexible, almost beak-like muzzle. Said muzzle, along with its paws, have very short fur, with the border between long and short fur being very abrupt, like the short fur was shaved.

The fingers of the paws are long and shaped similar to that of a bird's, but thicker, with three forward fingers/claws, and one almost directly opposed one. There is also some webbing between the fingers.

It has wide black or brown eyes, giving it excellent sight, a short neck, and a very long, fluffy tail to aid in its excellent balance. It is capable of great flexibility. While its ears are not visible, and are instead covered by fur, like birds, its hearing isn't too bad.

Dimensions
From its nose to the base of its tail, it's anywhere from seven to nine inches long, with its tail being just as long as the body. Being so small, it's twelve or thirteen ounces.

Diet
It mainly eats seeds, nuts, berries, and other fruits, with great preference to those found in trees. It also eats leaf buds, mushrooms, insects, and, rarely, meat, if there are no other options, especially in winter. It hoards food in fall, winter, spring, and sometimes summer.

Behavior
The singing squirrel is a very twitchy, energetic prey animal. It spends most of its life in trees, foraging for food. Being eaten by many types of predators, it is shy of all animals larger than itself. It's very fast, making it hard to catch before it hides in its underground burrow (if it's not summer) or retreats to precarious treetop edges. Pursuit up there would be suicide. Their perches are even dangerous for normal squirrels.

When fall blows in, with its cold winds and dropping leaves, it migrates to the southern ends of its woods, or maybe (if it's desperate or daring) even to a nearby forest. Then, it digs a burrow a foot deep. It then shifts its food hoard to the room at the end, where it will sleep until spring. Sometimes the burrow is reused the next year, but not if there's the chance something else used it.

It migrates back to their summer home soon after the young leave their parents. In summer, it may or may not have a home to hoard food at. If there is plenty of food, it won't hoard or have a nest, so it will travel nomadically among the trees until fall.

Breeding
During the middle of autumn, the singing squirrel's high-pitched, trailing song will begin to be heard. As time goes on, the squirrels gather together in groves and small sections of forest to sing louder, creating a not unpleasant melody. The males with weakness or poor singing are chased away by male and female alike, leaving the better breeding to compete for the females.

The males preen and show off their silky clean fur. They dance around on the smallest, highest twigs and flick their long tails. Soon before winter, the females choose their male and the pair retreat to the female's burrow to combine their winter hoards.

The litter of three is born in early spring, cared for by its parents. By mid spring, the family leaves the underground burrow to a well-crafted tree nest. By late spring, the surviving chicks go out and are ready to mate, though they may be too skinny or inexperienced to succeed.

Language
Their language is composed of high-pitched chirps that are similar to songbirds, but not quite right, and similarly off-sounding, long and trailing songs that do not vary much like most songbirds, except for when multiple are singing. Only a wolf with mimicry could attempt to "speak" their language, which communicates basic thoughts like "predator" or "follow". Learning this language would require many moons of following these creatures around and figuring out what their songs and chrips mean by trial and error.

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