A Nova Scotia woman is behind a children's book that captures real-life squirrels doing decidedly human things.
Nancy Rose has combined her love of nature and photography and channeled it into her pet project - a children’s book called ‘The Secret Life of Squirrels’.
She makes squirrel sized sets and props by hand and then waits for the little visitors to provide the perfect photo op.
“Squirrels will stand up and look like humans, so they will stand up on a grocery cart and they are just so curious,” says Rose. “I guess that's just the fun of them and the unpredictability of them. So I guess that's the challenge.”
She has a few tricks to capture the perfect scene, but mainly she just has to be fast.
“Part of it is all about setting up my set so it is interesting anyway and then I have to figure out where I want the squirrel to be in the picture,” says Rose. “So ideally he is going to be located in the best part of the photo and then I hide peanuts.”
Once set up, like all wildlife photographers, she waits and waits and waits for the star of the show to make their appearance.
“Some days I can get the shot I want right away,” says Rose. “The shot on the cover of ‘The Secret Life of Squirrels’ was almost instant and it was like this is too good to be true.”
The squirrels are wild, but they do very domestic things.
“They play piano, they make pancakes, they do the laundry, the go for candlelight dinners,” says Rose. “They do what we do, they have their secret little world.”
Rose has two books out and is working on a third and says she loves to share that world with her readers.
“It is so fun, I don't know what it is, I've been called nutty many times, that must be it,” says Rose.
Rose never knows what her furry friends will do or where they'll go next, she's just glad to be part of their adventure.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Kelland Sundahl