Squirrel ears, hairy and not so hairy

Now that I'm a bit more mobile, I can go out on the backyard deck and photograph suburban wildlife. If you can stand the bandwidth, click on the photo above and compare it with the squirrel of April 27. Note the ears of the latter are a good deal hairier than those of the first. This leads me to wonder if the squirrel above is a young fella while the April 27 critter is an old coot. You know, as they age, human geezers grow veritable thickets in their ears. Perhaps the same phenomenon is true of squirrels.