Give Squirrel XOEarth Awards to eco friends and others to thank them for their past or pledged environmental actions.

Lovers of our Earth’s biosphere are invited to copy and share, or print and give, these commemorative XOEarth Awards to your government officials, friends, businesses, customers, volunteers and employees to thank them for their environmental actions – either past or pledged.

These Squirrel XOEarth Awards have been dedicated to:
+ The Squirrel
+ 350.org
+ PETA – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
+ Bill McKibben – awarded the Right Livelihood Prize in 2014. Wrote the 1989 book The End of Nature about climate change. Founder of 350.org, a planet-wide, grassroots climate change movement, which has organized twenty thousand rallies around the world in every country save North Korea, spearheaded the resistance to the Keystone Pipeline, and launched the fast-growing fossil fuel divestment movement.
+ Michael Greger – author of How Not To Die. Prostate cancer in your family? Put down that glass of milk and add flaxseed to your diet. Heart disease is our #1 killer? Switch to a whole food, plant-based diet, which has been repeatedly shown not just to help prevent the disease, but arrest and even reverse it. High blood pressure? Get some Hibiscus tea. Liver disease? Drinking coffee can reduce liver inflammation. Battling breast cancer? Consuming soy is associated with prolonged survival.
+ Genesis – Going vegetarian of her own volition at the age of four, she chose to become vegan aged six, spurred on by a realisation she had watching her mother breastfeeding her baby brother. Her family joined Genesis by choosing the vegan lifestyle. Genesis has picketed circuses, given speeches to her local governors, been interviewed on news stations and set up her own foundation to raise money for animals in need – all before her ninth birthday.
+ High Carb Hannah – Eat all your favourite high carb foods (usually tipped as the reason for weight gain) while losing weight and feeling great? Vegan vlogger Hannah Howlett did just that and lost almost 60lbs, going from 188 lbs to 133 lbs. Following Dr. John McDougall’s 2012 diet, The Starch Solution, “High Carb Hannah” (as she is known on social media) ate meals packed with potatoes, rice, oatmeal and other starches while consistently dropping fat and feeling healthier along the way.


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The Squirrel

Tree squirrels, unlike most mammals, can descend a tree head-first. They do so by rotating their ankles 180 degrees, enabling the hind paws to point backward and thus grip the tree bark from the opposite direction.

Squirrels live in almost every habitat, from tropical rainforest to semiarid desert, avoiding only the high polar regions and the driest of deserts. They are predominantly herbivorous, subsisting on seeds and nuts, but many will eat insects and even small vertebrates.

Many juvenile squirrels die in the first year of life. Adult squirrels can have a lifespan of 5 to 10 years in the wild. Some can survive 10 to 20 years in captivity.[11] Premature death may be caused when a nest falls from the tree, in which case the mother may abandon her young if their body temperature is not correct.

Squirrels mate either once or twice a year and, following a gestation period of three to six weeks, give birth to a number of offspring that varies by species. The young are altricial, being born naked, toothless, and blind. In most species of squirrel, the female alone looks after the young, which are weaned at six to ten weeks and become sexually mature by the end of their first year. In general, the ground-dwelling squirrel species are social, often living in well-developed colonies, while the tree-dwelling species are more solitary.

Because squirrels cannot digest cellulose, they must rely on foods rich in protein, carbohydrates, and fats. In temperate regions, early spring is the hardest time of year for squirrels because the nuts they buried are beginning to sprout (and thus are no longer available to eat), while many of the usual food sources have not yet become available. During these times, squirrels rely heavily on the buds of trees. Squirrels, being primarily herbivores, eat a wide variety of plants, as well as nuts, seeds, conifer cones, fruits, fungi, and green vegetation. Some squirrels, however, also consume meat, especially when faced with hunger. Squirrels have been known to eat small birds, young snakes, and smaller rodents, as well as bird eggs and insects. Indeed, some tropical squirrel species have shifted almost entirely to a diet of insects.

The living squirrels are divided into five subfamilies, with about 58 genera and some 285 species. The oldest squirrel fossil, Hesperopetes, dates back to the Chadronian (late Eocene, about 40–35 million years ago) and is similar to modern flying squirrels.

Squirrels [otherwise] appear to be safe and pose almost zero risk of transmitting rabies.

In the Ramayana, an ancient Sanskrit epic poem, a squirrel assists in constructing a bridge from India to Sri Lanka to help Rama rescue his wife Sita. Rama rewards the squirrel by stroking his back with his three middle fingers, thus giving the Indian palm squirrel the three white stripes that appear on its back. In Norse mythology, the squirrel Ratatoskr is a messenger who scurries up and down the trunk of the world-tree Yggdrasil, carrying malicious gossip and insults back and forth between the dragon Níðhöggr, who sits at the bottom of the tree gnawing on its roots, and the hawk Veðrfölnir, who sits at the top of the tree keeping watch.

In Irish mythology, the goddess Medb is said to always have a bird perched on one shoulder and a squirrel on the other, serving as her messengers to the sky and the earth respectively. In Europe during the Middle Ages, squirrels were sometimes used in bestiaries as symbols of greed and avarice on account of their storing of nuts, but, in the nineteenth century, British natural history books often praised them as thrifty for this same reason. A myth told by the Ainu people of Japan holds that squirrels are the discarded sandals of the ancestral deity Aioina, possibly because squirrels move in spurts like footsteps. The Kalevala, a Finnish epic poem collected in the nineteenth century but rooted in much older oral tradition, contains references to squirrels, including mention of a white squirrel being born of a virgin.

The University of Texas at Austin is home to a white squirrel population which has spurred the myth of the albino squirrel as a good luck charm. There are many versions of the tale; one of the more popular versions is if one spots the albino squirrel before an exam, they will ace it.

Wildlife rehabilitators in the field have noted that neither raw nor roasted peanuts nor sunflower seeds are healthy for squirrels, because they are deficient in several essential nutrients. This type of deficiency has been found to cause metabolic bone disease, a somewhat common ailment found in malnourished squirrels.

Excerpts via Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ecology

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PETA – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

In recognition of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals‘s work to defend and liberate the world’s abused and tortured animals, and climate protection work by fighting animal factory farms, we are honored to dedicate these Squirrel XOEarth Awards to the PETA.org.

PETA is an animal rights organization and, as such, it rejects speciesism and also opposes the use and abuse of animals in any way, as food, clothing, entertainment, or research subjects.

One oft-cited quote of Newkirk’s is: “When it comes to feelings like hunger, pain, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.”

PETA lobbies government agencies to impose fines and/or confiscate animals when animal-welfare legislation has been violated, promotes a vegan lifestyle, tries to reform practices on factory farms and in slaughterhouses, sends undercover investigators into animal-research laboratories, farms, and circuses, initiates media campaigns against particular companies or practices, helps to find sanctuaries for animals formerly used by circuses and zoos, and initiates lawsuits against companies that refuse to change their practices.

The organization is known for its aggressive media campaigns, combined with a solid base of celebrity support—in addition to its honorary directors, Paul McCartney, Alicia Silverstone, Eva Mendes, Charlize Theron, Ellen DeGeneres, and many other notable celebrities have appeared in PETA ads.[33] Every week, Newkirk holds what The New Yorker calls a “war council,” with two dozen of her top strategists gathered at a square table in the PETA conference room, with no suggestion considered too outrageous.

PETA gives an annual prize, called the Proggy Award (for “progress”), to individuals or organizations dedicated to animal welfare or who distinguish themselves through their efforts within the area of animal welfare.

Excerpts via Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_for_the_Ethical_Treatment_of_Animals.

Support PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals] at PETA.org

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350.org

We like 350.org alot. To cheer on 350.org‘s and 350Action.org‘s crucial climate protection work that is helping save our biosphere’s climate — and therefore humankind and other species — we are honored to dedicate these World Climate Action Awards to 350.org and 350Action.org.

What’s not to like – ok, ok, it’s also love! – about 350.org work on “Climate-focused campaigns, projects and actions led from the bottom-up by people in 188 countries”, and that they say, “We believe in a safe climate and a better future — a just, prosperous, and equitable world built with the power of ordinary people.”

We also freaking [not fracking] love that 350.org peeps helped found and power up the various Climate Marches they get rolling!

350 activists around the world say, “Join the Peoples Climate Movement in Washington, D.C. and across the country to stand up for our communities and climate. We resist. We build. We rise.”

And they announce, “Everything we have struggled to move forward in the United States is in peril. Our loved ones feel under siege, and those in power in Washington are advancing a dark and dangerous vision of America that we know is untrue. To change everything, we need everyone.

Then there is the totally righteous 350.org Divest-Invest movement.

This movement states that, “We can have a huge impact collectively when we move our money from fossil fuels to climate solutions. With renewable energy becoming more competitive every day, we can promote a healthy planet and economic security by divesting from fossil fuels and reinvesting in solutions.”

Read and do sign the pledge at 350.org to make it real. Purty please. 😉

And another HUGE THING, ya gotta love 350Action.org‘s political arm that has the mission in the United States to initiate “Campaigns, projects and actions that will change climate politics for the better.”

Please donate to both 350.org‘s and 350Action.org‘s mighty fine projects… yessss… today.

Yepperz, Stele Ely, XOEarth.org’s founder, participates in 350.org events, has taken the Divest-Invest Pledge and will continue supporting 350.org’s work with his time and a some money.
For all the life, Stele Ely

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XOEarth Award Printing Tips

To print these awards, first go to your browser’s file menu and then to print preview. Decide which page you want to print. Set the margins to zero. Increase the custom size to between 100% to 107% depending on your browser. Then print.

For more printing tips see XOEarth.org/printing-tips.

There are two kinds of XOEarth Awards – Fast and Slow. Slow XOEarth Awards have a place to write the name of the person being honored, the eco action they have taken, and the name of the presenter. Fast XOEarth Awards don’t need to be filled out.

To see more XOEarth environmental awards that you can copy and share, or print and give to others for their eco actions, go to XOEarth.org/Awards.

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