The weird magic of the Internet in one 13-second squirrel video

For the last couple of years, my wife has made a habit of feeding the local squirrel and bird population from our deck.

For the squirrels in particular, she keeps a large stock of peanuts on hand to toss out there any time one of our fuzzy-tailed friends comes to the back door hoping for a handout.

(That's exactly what they do, by the way. They boldly climb onto the deck and come right up to our door. I don't know how well they can see us on the other side of the glass, but they can at least detect movement in the kitchen, which they take as a sign that a generous human is coming to give them a snack.)

At some point Terry also purchased a little red chair with a screw protruding from the seat. The idea is to fasten a corn cob onto the screw so that your squirrel friends can eat from it.

That's what you're seeing in the video above. One recent Saturday, I walked into the kitchen and saw a squirrel on the deck happily wolfing down a breakfast of hardened corn. I whipped out my phone, shot that clip and posted it on Facebook for friends and family to enjoy,

The next thing I knew, I was a minor social media influencer in India.

I don't know how it happened, but that video (which was posted publicly for anyone to come across) caught on with a group of folks from India. As I write this, it has in excess of 900 Facebook "likes," more than three-quarters of which are from people with decidedly Indian names whose bios suggest they live on the subcontinent.

Also at press time, the video had nearly 5,000 views, a significant chunk of which presumably came from my new Indian friends.

On the grand scale of the Internet, 900+ likes and 5,000 views are as nothing. They barely constitute a blip on the cyberspace radar.

But when you consider that I posted this innocuous little video on a whim, with no other intention than to share a smile and an "awwwww, he's so cute!" with my Facebook pals – only maybe two dozen of whom regularly interact with my content – this feels remarkable.

I don't know any of the folks from India who liked, shared and watched the video, nor do I know any of the Indian names who are suddenly "following" me on Facebook as a content creator.

For all of the not-so-good it creates, the Internet does a wonderful job connecting people who otherwise would never know each other. My short "Squirrel Breakfast" clip is a quirky little case study in that.

Which I think is just wonderful.

And so, for the record, does the squirrel who stars in the video. I asked him.