When he’s not performing with musical or improvisational ensembles, Dalton Maltz ’16 spends time tending to the furry residents of campus.

Maltz, who is known among students as the “squirrel whisperer,” said that be began to interact with squirrels on campus in the Fall semester of 2014. Maltz said he sat down in front of Althouse one day, started interacting with them and “they didn’t seem to be very afraid of me.”

“I decided to start bringing nuts with me wherever I went, so that in time the squirrels might come to know that I meant them no harm,” Maltz said. His progress was strong, and “by May I was hand feeding them, and only two months ago I got one to climb into my lap for a peanut.”  Maltz, a frequenter of the outdoors, said that he’s become “a walking vending machine” for the squirrels, providing them with peanuts.

Maltz recalls that it was “very easy” to get the squirrels’ attention.

“All I had to do was slap the ground with my hand, or a leaf, and they would come running over,” he said. He claims that after a while, certain squirrels began to recognize him and would come to him for peanuts.

Although he does enjoy “befriending the squirrels,” Maltz is more than just the “guy who feeds [them].”  He is the president of “Run With It!,” an improvisational group and a history major. Additionally, he is “an active Mermaid Player,” and a member of his Irish-folk band, “Two Men and a Baby”.

“Those are the things I really care about and love at Dickinson,” Maltz said of his extracurricular activities.

A native of Sherman Oaks, Calif., Maltz said that he has learned much about the squirrels at Dickinson based on his experiences with them.  He has learned their warning call for when there is a hawk searching for lunch, and also that the Eastern Grey Squirrel does not hibernate. He said he has no intent of working with squirrels after he graduates in the spring, but that feeding squirrels is just one of his many pastimes on campus.

“A lot of people ask me why I do what I do,” he said, “and I usually have to ask them in return, ‘What do you do in your spare time?’ Dickinson is a beautiful place to spend an afternoon sitting outside.”

Maltz offered some advice for students who are hesitant to pursue a hidden passion.

“If more people just did what they wanted to do instead of worrying about what other people thought, this campus would be a much more interesting place.”