Squirrels - Animals or Set Decorations?

I drive a white car and there is a tree that overhangs my driveway. Because of these two facts I know which branch of the tree the birds like best and I know immediately when purple berry season comes in the Spring. The birds eat at our bird feeder, nest in my wife's birdhouses and drink from our fish pond. [That last bit is somewhat risky for them -- bullfrogs can and do catch and eat small birds.] Birds leave ample evidence of their activities. They are not just Disneyesque set decorations. I'm not so sure about the squirrels.

The squirrels also eat from the bird feeder. They eat tiny parts of pinecones and strew the rest all over the yard. When I let the dog out before I go to work in the morning there is usually a chubby squirrel on the picnic table chomping away on kibbles filched from the dog's bowl. Squirrels seem to spend all of their time eating (when they are not chasing other squirrels or jumping from tree to tree.) Chomp, chomp, chomp. Nibble, nibble, nibble. That's what squirrels do. They are eating machines.

Which leads me to my theory that thay are animatronic -- with all that eating you'd thing that people with white cars would know which branches the squirrels liked...