Clean Teeth

For the past few months I've been finding this:

The back yard

And this:

A pile of swept up leaves on the back deck

Then there was this on Sunday:

More.  Stinking.  Leaves/branches.

Finally there is this today:

A view from the Knitting Room

It's the squirrels.  It has to be the squirrels. 
What, pray tell, are those blasted things up to!?

Well, after visiting squirrels.org (amazingly enough there is such a thing) I read this:

Squirrels chew on tree branches to sharpen and clean their teeth. That's why you may see many small branches on the ground around large trees. They will also chew on power lines for the same reason, this has caused many major power outages throughout the country.

My squirrels must have the cleanest, sharpest teeth in the neighborhood.

That's enough to make a surrogate squirrel mom proud. 

Now, they had better cut it out. 

And not even think of chewing on my power lines.