Thelife- A Pennsylvania
art student named Lumi Barron builds incredible sets for the squirrels in her backyard. - She has filmed the squirrels doing everything from reading tiny books to eating off miniature bagel spreads.
- Barron told Insider that she came up with the idea after seeing an illustration of
animals picnicking together in a children's book. - She hides nuts throughout each set to draw the squirrels in, and uses peanut butter to encourage them to interact with the props.
- Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.
It used to be that you could only see squirrels reading a book or enjoying a cup of tea in the pages of a children's fantasy.
But now, Lumi Barron has brought these wondrous images to life, building incredible miniature sets in her backyard that make squirrels seem, well, just like us.
There's one
While squirrel picnic tables and restaurants have become a major trend recently, Barron told Insider that she actually began making her sets back in early February.
Barron started building the squirrel sets for a course she was taking at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
The 22-year-old senior, who will graduate this month with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, came up with the idea after she stumbled upon an illustration in a children's book while searching for inspiration.
"It pictured a bunch of wild animals picnicking together in the forest," she told Insider. "I was familiar with seeing drawings of anthropomorphic wild animals, and thought there was something really wonderful about them."
"I had never seen it done for real, and decided it would be the perfect project," she added. "At that point, I had no idea if it would even be possible to do. I had no idea how wild squirrels would react to the sets I was planning."
As the US went into lockdown in March, Barron drew inspiration from her own situation while building her squirrel sets
"The sets that I create, and actions that I try to get the squirrels to participate in, very much mimic the ways in which I have been spending my time," she said. "I've been reading, I've been baking, and I've been working from home, often glued to my laptop."
Barron said her bagel set was inspired by a professor at Carnegie Mellon who led a baking day with his students over video chat. She built the set based on what she could see of his kitchen on her screen.
"The one good thing about being stuck at home during the pandemic has been that I now have much more time to spend with the squirrels to keep making these videos," Barron said.
The length of time it takes to make each set varies
Barron said there is a lot of rebuilding that needs to be done as well because the squirrels often sit on — or break — her props.
"Many of the small detail pieces, such as the plates and cups, are miniatures or dollhouse pieces leftover from stop-motion animation videos that I have made in the past," she added. "All the larger set pieces — such as bookshelves, tables, and anything that I can make by printing and folding paper or craft from things found in the yard — are things I have made."
Barron said she has been 'training' the squirrels to come to specific locations, leaving snacks in certain parts of her backyard
There are nuts (usually walnuts) hidden throughout the sets, and Barron also uses food to encourage the squirrels to interact with her props.
"Part of getting them to do certain things, like picking up a book, comes down to being clever about where you place peanut butter," she said.
In addition to squirrel food and nuts, Barron has also experimented with apples, carrots, and two different kinds of peanut butter. Squirrels, it turns out, prefer the classic Jif to "fancy" Costco peanut butter, she said.
"At this point, the squirrels have run off with over half of the plates and cups that have been put out, and I'm making sure not to use any plastic because I know the pieces will disappear," Barron added. "There is a very happy squirrel somewhere who now owns a complete, matching set of tableware to pull out for dinner parties."
Barron now has a cast of eight "repeating visitors," along with five new squirrels who are just out of the nest.
She captures their movements using a Canon M50 camera that's set up to record at 120 frames per second, and she uses an iPhone 7 hidden inside a Ziploc bag near a pile of snacks to record their sounds.
"The camera is attached to a long USB that allows me to control it remotely from my kitchen window, where I can watch and know when to hit record," Barron explained. "Sometimes there are magical moments when I catch the shot I was hoping for on the first take, but more often than not it takes hours or sometimes days of watching, reassembling, altering, and waiting until I capture the video that I want."
But all that hoping and waiting is always worth it when Barron sees the squirrels in her sets
"It was incredibly exciting to see the squirrels really interact with the sets for the first time, and really every time following that," she said. "There's always something new that comes out of it."
"There's something wonderful in seeing them interact with a thing you have made, especially when they act in a way that mimics people," she added. "Often the squirrels surprise me, and I capture something much more interesting than I could have come up with myself."
Barron is graduating in a week but said she has no plans to stop filming as long as she has a backyard and squirrels coming to visit her sets. And people are definitely tuning in.
"There is just something about squirrels," she said. "They are these bizarre, tiny little beasts that are really clever, and funny, and cute, and I think that's what draws people in."
- Read more:
- A man built a tiny restaurant for squirrels and birds in his yard, and it's already wildly popular
- A man built a tiny picnic table for squirrels in his garden after losing his job, and now it's become a full-time business
- A photographer captured the exact moment a squirrel flew across the water with a walnut in its mouth
- A photographer captured the exact moment a squirrel stopped to smell a daisy