I wish I had thought to get my point and shoot and take a video, but I'm not sure she would have let me. I've been feeding this particular black squirrel with a white tipped tail on and off for the past 5 years because I'm so impressed with her survival skills. (Though part of that is probably her working all the neighbors for treats.) We named her "Trouble" because she's such a bad ass and usually wins all the squirrel fights. She comes around and sits on the deck until I see her and come out to toss some walnut halves or almonds. She turns her nose up at anything other than premium nuts.

Today I opened the door and she was a few feet outside of it, dashing for what I thought was one of the walnuts I'd lobbed onto the deck, but I saw she was going after an enormous, creepy grasshopper, maybe the same one we saw hanging on the screen yesterday. Took a her a couple tries, but his fate was sealed - she nabbed him, making her angry little squeaky squirrel sounds and quickly went to work devouring him alive, ripping him to shreds...lol! First the head - chomp chomp, then bit off the legs and spit them out, same for the wings, turned him over and bit off the butt end, pulled out what looked like intestine and left that for me on the deck, then chomped her way through the rest of him. Smacked her chops and moved on to the walnuts. One less critter eating my plants, good girl!!

LOL! You can tell I don't have too many wild nature encounters... up close and personal... the little predator. :)