Squirrels Can Cause Hearing Loss !!!

I love the great outdoors as much as anyone. As a matter of fact, I was once a wilderness life director at a summer camp, charged with capturing and taking care of many kinds of critters. What I did not realize was that my life as an audiologist would eventually intersect with that of my life as a wilderness life director. The problem is our furry friend the squirrel. Yes, the bushy gray or black or brown version. I had a patient who also loved the great outdoors and all of God's creatures. Together, with his wife, would spend time in their back yard, filling their bird feeders and then watching the  various birds come and eat. While this family lived in town, they were blessed to have other creatures also frequent their back yard and they felt compelled to make sure that they too were well fed. Amongst these creatures were the squirrels. This couple had the squirrels eating out of the palm of their hand and always kept a nice supply of unshelled peanuts around in order to provide for the squirrels. Sometimes, the squirrels would eat the peanuts right away and other times they would run off with their find to bury it to provide nutrition in the lean winter months (this is what squirrels do).

Given that this was one of my patients, it would be safe to surmise that he had a hearing loss and in this case also wore a hearing aid. One day this man decided that his grass was getting a bit long and required cutting. The man stood in his back yard with his lawn mower ready to go when he realized that he was still wearing his in the ear, custom fit, rather expensive hearing aid. Not wanting to waste a lot of time, he set his hearing aid on the picnic table and started to mow his lawn. In the blink of an eye, the well-trained peanut eating squirrel recognized on the picnic table what it believed to be the offering of a peanut and promptly scurried over and picked it up. Knowing winter was coming, he decided that he might consider burying this morsel of potential food. As the squirrel bounded off, he realized that the man mowing the lawn was also bounding in his direction waving and yelling. Having no intention of sharing his food, he scurried off to burry his food find.

It was a few days later that this man came to my office, embarrassed to tell me that he had lost his hearing aid in this manner and that for all his searching he could not find the hole in which his hearing aid was burried. Fortunately, the man had warranty left on his hearing aid and was able to have it replaced under that warranty. It turned out that it was the squirrel that had the big surprise one winters day when he was hungry and remembered that "peanut" that he had saved for just such an occasion.