Flying Squirrel

This afternoon Dad and I wandered into the woods off our lane to check on some dead trees that we'll be cutting for firewood. It started to rain, so we trotted back out again, and just before I got to the road I spotted this dead flying squirrel lying belly-up on the forest floor. It looks as though some predator got it, from the marks probably some bird of prey. We had been talking loudly back and forth and tramping along, not my usual try-to-be-quiet prowling and looking, so we didn't notice whay may have gotten the squirrel. I scooped it up to examine it back at the house, it wasn't warm as it should have been had it a fresh kill, felt more like it had been laying there a while, although when I set it upon a newspaper the fleas started to come off it, so it hadn't been there long. My "Mammals of Ontario" describes the northern flying squirrel's belly hairs as being gray at the base, as this one does, so I'm thinking it's a northern. Makes me sad to find one in this condition, they're beautiful little squirrels. I had a live one active near my cabin last summer, saw it land on the trunk of pine, and I could hear a soft *thump* on my cabin roof now and then before I went to sleep, no doubt one of them landing on its way to and from the big oak tree. We have 3 big oaks in a clump near the house, I should put a little feeder platform on one of the trunks and put a couple handfulls of sunflower seeds out after dark, see if I can attract some to where I can photograph them.