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At first, I thought you were wrong and that those were chipmunks rather than squirrels because I am used to tree squirrels, which look entirely different than that, whereas the ground squirrels look more like chipmunks than tree squirrels, the most prominent difference being that lack of a strip along the head. I'm in Maine, and we primarily have Eastern Gray Squirrels here.
My gray squirrels aren't pets exactly, but I do enjoy having them around. I began feeding the birds on a fire escape balcony on the second floor of our house. Of course, the squirrels soon came and I found that I enjoy them perhaps more than I did the birds. Rather than the losing battle that usually occurs when someone tries to keep the squirrels out of the bird food, I mix squirrel food in with bird food, and the squirrels eat the bulk of both, but I still get birds too. I don enjoy putting suet cakes in the metal cages that are supposed to keep the squirrels out, and watching the squirrels go to work at it. Sometimes it take them am few days but eventually one of them will figure out how to open it and make off with the whole cake.
I also enjoy putting nuts out for them in the fall and watching them bury them all over the yard. Unfortunately, that includes my garden bed, as they uproot plants to make room for nut storage. The Eastern Gray Squirrel doesn't have a storage system like the red squirrel does. They simply hid or bury them in every available spot and then go searching for it later, so I find nuts in the strangest places sometimes. In the winter, they even bury them in the snow.
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