Qualicum Bay pub sets up tiny picnic table for squirrel named Charlie

Sawatsky Sign-Off: Squirrel Bench "I call them my therapy patio pets" Adam finds out the story behind a Qualicum Bay pub’s beloved and furry patron, a squirrel named Charlie who eats at his own tiny picnic bench.

Qualicum Bay, B.C. — Despite the name of this historic roadhouse, there’s no “Crown and Anchor” here. What you will find, instead, are guests who are cute and furry.

“They have a little path across the back of the parking lot,” says Holly, the pub’s manager.

After a large black bear started walking around the back, Holly named the small black bunny sneaking under the fence Little Bear.

Holly shows CTV News videos of the rabbit, ranging from the bunny stretching its furry body to the bunny munching its favourite carrot.

When she’s not bonding with the bunny in the morning, Holly’s cleaning up the bar and sweeping up the back patio. That’s where she was when the squirrel attacked her.

“I kept cleaning the pine cones off the patio and he started throwing them at me,” Holly says, before showing CTV News a video of the chair she had to use as cover from the squirrel’s arsenal.

“Squirrels have good aim!”

It seems that Holly’s patio sweeping was interfering with the squirrel’s food gathering.

When she told the story to one of the members of the Qualicum Bay volunteer fire department, Mark suggested that the problem could be extinguished not by fighting the squirrel but befriending him.

“Holly bought me a leash for the squirrel,” Mark says, showing the joke gift the manager gave him.

“And I said to her, ‘Are you serious? I’m not going to take this thing for a walk!’”

Because why would you take a squirrel for a walk when you could simply set up a proper place for it to eat, away from the ground of the pub’s patio?

“I screwed this to the fence,” Mark says, pointing to the squirrel’s tiny picnic table, which features a sign saying: “Nut House.”

“He sits and eats his peanuts there.”

The squirrel — who’s been named Charlie — comes when Mark calls him. He scurries across the fence, sits at the table, grabs a peanut by his mouth or hands, and starts nibbling on it.

Mark’s wife found the mini table online. Now, he’s never without a pocketful of peanuts, and Holly says Charlie hasn’t thrown a cone at her since. He’s transformed from foe to another furry friend.

“I call them my therapy patio pets,” Holly smiles. “It’s a nice thing to come out every morning and be greeted.”

Like the iconic TV pub “Cheers,” The Crown and Anchor is a place where everybody knows Big Bear, Little Bear and Charlie’s names, and they’re always glad they came.

“People think we’re weird,” Mark smiles. “But I haven’t gone squirrelly yet!”