Wildlife Gardening: squirrel collecting twine, 1 by realbirdlady

realbirdlady wrote:
This is the frame to a former screened porch. I had some garden twine tied to the crosspiece and dangling down for some flowering vines to climb up. I walked by and notice that all but one of the twine had broken at the crosspiece, which seemed sorta odd, but I figured it had been rubbing in the wind or something, oh well.

Then the squirrel came back. (She runs across the frame all the time.) She gnawed through where the twine was tied at the top, then reeled it in (about four feet) with her little squirrel hands. Then she stuck one end of it in her mouth, and started looping the rest of it into a nice neat bundle for carrying. (She's almost done in the photo.) Then ran off across the roof.

?? We've been having serious serious drought/heat here, so a lot of animals are eating things they don't normally eat. So at first I thought maybe she thought it was some kind of vine or something she was going to gnaw on. But when she rolled it up, ?? The only other thing I can think of is that she thought it would be nice in her nest, but it seems like an odd time to be making a new nest, plus there is tons of nice leaves, twigs, grass/straw etc on the ground. (See drought, above.)

Any other ideas?