We first noticed her last month when she was moving her babies from one tree to another. Then, a few days later, she was in the tree in our front yard, and she didn’t seem bothered by us at all. She let us get super close to her, too.

We noticed she only had one ear, so we figured she had probably been scrapping with the neighborhood cats. The next day, we saw her building a nest in the ficus in our front yard. We thought she was cute, and we welcomed her to our tree, until we realized that she was building her nest by tearing up the weed barrier covering our yard. She wasn’t so cute after that.

I see her almost every day now, and it’s usually an interaction like this where we stumble upon each other unexpectedly, and she runs away, but only far enough to stay out of my reach, as if I would try to catch her. She’s not bothered by me in the slightest.

While she clung to the side of the tree while I was taking her picture this afternoon, she helped herself to a little snack of tree bark, so I know she wasn’t scared. Even if she did tear up my weed barrier, she’s still a better neighbor than any of my others, so she’s welcome here.