A couple of squirrel cousins

While walking past the park on my last full day in Berkeley, I was struck by the fact that the groundspeople had lopped off an enormous part of this great oak tree. After I took the photo, I realized that a squirrel had been posing for me. (Just now I noticed a second squirrel in the tree.)

So I honed in for a closer look:

Our mammalian ancestors, those who survived the scourge of the dinosaur, were not much smaller than squirrels, and I feel an instinctual kinship with these clever creatures.