Down south people used to have the big ones because there was no cable service and the small ones didn't exist before. After everything got tiny people took down the big ones, turned them upside-down, and built tiki-bars. Maybe you could build a little tiki-bar for squirrels.

If you wanted to try using it for hot water, I'm sure you could point it south, run some coil tubing in it's center for your domestic hot water to detour through, much like I did with my compost water heater system. Lining the dish with aluminum foil or black paint would probably get it pretty hot and would get most benefit when using hot water with the sun out and winterizing for freezing weather.