The peanut gallery Tasty snack is the draw as furry friends check out squirrel-sized dioramas By: Kittie Wong  Posted: 11:47 AM CST Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018 Last Modified: 9:11 PM CST Saturday, Nov. 24, 2018

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This article was published 21/11/2018 (2228 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Squirrels. Cute. Industrious. Ubiquitous. And opportunistic creatures.

You either love ’em or you hate ’em. There is no middle ground.

Debbie Vokey loves the little rodents. She loves them so much she created a photographic series called It’s a Squirrelly World, which was exhibited at the Millennium Library as part of the Flash Photographic Festival last month.

Her interest in squirrels as a photographic subject began around 2013.

“I actually saw something online, somebody had sent me,” says Vokey. “It started with a picture of a squirrel standing next to a Barbie bike and peanuts on the back of the Barbie bike. And I went ‘Oh my god. This is the cutest thing ever.’ I just loved it. And I thought ‘I can do this.’”

The Winnipeg woman spent the next two years researching and sourcing materials to make her squirrel-sized dioramas.

“The red squirrel is 1:6 scale. Barbie is 1:6 scale,” says Vokey. “So, I sourced a lot of Barbie things for the dioramas and other odds and sods.”

It was two years of planning and patience that involved waiting for her kitchen renovation to be completed. The renovation included a new window looking out at the wooden table sitting on her deck. It doubles as her studio, allowing her to photograph the squirrels without disturbing or spooking them.

“There was a lot of anticipation and I kinda got a bit stalled out. But I met with a mentor, a photographer friend, and he’s like: ‘Just take a picture. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t have to be exact. Just start.’”

She photographed her first squirrel in September 2015. The squirrel had been exploring one of the dioramas she had created at the time.

“I had the little golf bag sitting on my table. It was about to rain and my window was closed,” she says. “I just had to get started because I had waited two years to start the project.”

So, why squirrels?

“You have to be a nature lover because there’s a lot of squirrel haters, right? Yeah, there are a lot of squirrel haters. I get it because they’re very destructive,” says Vokey, who retired a year and a half ago after working 37 years for the provincial government. She got into photography when the digital era was starting.

“This is my way of saying no matter what we have out there in nature, we can also enjoy them. We understand they may be dangerous or they may be destructive animals, but we can still enjoy them for what they have to offer. And everybody has a squirrel in their yard unless you live in a high-rise, an apartment or downtown.”

One can’t help wondering if the squirrel she photographs in her various dioramas every year is the same squirrel in every image.

“It’s not,” Vokey laughs. “First off, it’s very hard to tell one squirrel from another unless one of them has been in a fight and they (are) missing fur or (have) a particularly bad tail or something like that.”

She says there were three different squirrels who had become her subjects.

Two lived on Vokey’s property — one in the wood pile and the other in the roof of her house. In her words, she had a very good working relationship with the roof dweller.

“As you know, we shouldn’t have squirrels living in the roof of the house,” she says. “I’ve heard all the stories — $7,000 worth of electrical damage and all that kind of stuff. Anyway, he was in there for about four years. It was great. He would run through my middle soffits in the morning… which is very loud. My (bedroom window) is right by the soffits. ‘OK, he’s up, I’m up, our day is ready to go.’ And he knows, because he can hear me, that he was gonna get fed.

“I didn’t do dioramas in the morning (but) he just knew I would put some peanuts and stuff for him which, of course, he stored in one-third of the soffit. It was loaded.”

Everyone warned her no good would come from having the squirrel living in her roof. She recalls her friends urging her, “Debbie, Debbie, you can’t let it stay there. This is terrible.”

Her response?

“I know, but he’s such a good model. He’s really adding to my life. You have no idea what he does for me.”

Eventually, the roof dweller’s time had run out.

“You know what happened? I retired and he still ran through the soffits at 6:20 in the morning,” says Vokey. “I didn’t want to get up at 6:20 anymore and I had to kick him out. That was the only reason and I knew that I was going to upset the apple cart in the whole yard. And I did. He kicked the wood pile guy out of the yard and then he left the yard. And now I have no squirrels living in my yard.”

It seems the wood pile wasn’t good enough for the roof dweller.

Before the two squirrels vacated her backyard, they had an understanding when it came to the dioramas Vokey placed on the backyard table.

“One would come to the diorama, take a peanut and go put it in the roof of the house, then the other one would come down the tree and jump on the table, grab the peanut and take it to the wood pile,” she explains.

This would go on until the peanuts were gone.

“The squirrels were never there at the same time. But if the timing wasn’t right, there would be a fight between the two squirrels. Then there would be a cooling off period and I would have to wait until one of them decided to come back.”

She doesn’t have any photographs of the squirrels fighting.

“It’s just really a ball of red fur. That’s it. That’s all you see. They are so fast.”

The third squirrel lived at the lake. He visited her whenever she went there.

“He’d come 10-12 times a day. He worked out fantastic. I got a different backdrop than I would here (in the city). Some of the backdrops I made I put in my diorama but there were others where I wanted a natural backdrop. So working with him at the lake was great. And then the next summer I never saw him once. And then this past summer I saw him two weekends and never saw him again.”

The project has been difficult since then. Vokey’s initial problem was having plenty of furry creatures as photo subjects but not having the dioramas ready. Now, the problem has reversed. Continuing with the project is not impossible, though.

Occasionally, capturing the perfect moment passes too quickly to enjoy.

“Sometimes, it’s a letdown if it happens immediately. All that work that goes into building the diorama and the time and the sourcing of the materials. I wait for the right lighting, the right weather and then, if it’s OK, I’m gonna try it. (The squirrel) comes in and I’m like ‘oh my god, I’ve got a perfect picture in the first three frames.’ Well, that’s it I guess. I gotta start with the next diorama. The challenge is done. I kinda like it when he doesn’t do what I want him to do right away.”

The project has been a labour of love.

“To watch (the squirrel) come into the diorama and (see) how curious they are and what they do when they’re in the diorama. The surprises that I get from them looking like they’re doing something I didn’t expect them to do in the diorama. I’m just so thrilled to see it,” she says.

Since Vokey started photographing the squirrels exploring the dioramas, the No. 1 question asked of her is, “Is it real?” She answered the question by photographing a friend peeking out and over her golf diorama.

“It was to give some scale and some reality to what you were looking at…,” she says. “The squirrel is real. He’s not stuffed. He’s wild. He’s not my pet. It just shows up… It is the No. 1 most asked question. (laughs) And I’m thinking ‘you do know squirrels don’t do laundry, right?’”

Vokey loves to share her creative passions with others. From her images, she would make the odd art card and calendars for herself and friends. And it led to an opportunity to share her images with the public. Last year, her images were used to create calendars, which were sold at FortWhyte Alive. This endeavour happened quite by accident.

“I wanted to get this project out there for others to enjoy,” Vokey explains. “I actually went to FortWhyte to see if they would do Flash Fest with me. I brought the calendars just to show my work, not to have them sell my calendars.”

Although the centre was unable to participate in Flash Fest, they expressed interest in her calendars.

This year, the 2019 calendars are available at Scoular, located on De Vos Road. Her art cards are available at the Millennium Library gift shop.

Participating in Flash Fest and creating the calendars has fulfilled some of Vokey’s desire to share her images with the public.

“My big grand plan is to share. I just want other people to see the images and enjoy them,” she says.

And she has grander plans for her project even though she confesses it might seem a little ambitious.

“I would like to see care facilities that have courtyards, be able to have dioramas for the squirrel and have people go see the squirrel go into the diorama, and… be able to photograph and enjoy the squirrels to a different degree than they currently do,” says Vokey. “They can (also) have competitions across Canada for their images and their dioramas that they built in those facilities.

“Furthering the project into that grand idea is going to take some effort. I’m a very busy retiree (laughs) as they say. I don’t know how I ever had time to work. Finding a passion post career ‘fills my soul.’ As much as I enjoy doing it, the sharing just doubles it, so that’s the goal.”

kittie.wong@freepress.mb.ca

Kittie Wong
Page designer

Kittie Wong wears three different hats for the Winnipeg Free Press editorial department: page designer, picture editor and web editor.

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