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Texas Gardening

A Red Squirrel going Grey?

10 years ago

Sorry, the image is blurry, has to shoot it from inside house, through the window. He is grey all the way down his back to the base of his tail. Looks like a squirrel in opossum cape and mask. Have you seen anything like this?

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Comments (17)

cynthianovak
Original Author
10 years ago
See his back?
bostedo: 8a tx-bp-dfw
10 years ago
Never seen anything like it among the dozens we have around here each year. The grey back with red belly does look odd. A grey squirrel/fox squirrel hybrid? Old age?

Thanks for sharing the photo.
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Josie_2, "I have bought 2 Havahart traps (1 for regular squirrels and 1 for red squirrels) and I still can't trap the little devils. They help themselves to the bait and the traps spring shut without them inside." Unless there is something mechanically wrong with your traps, it is virtually impossible for a squirrel to eat the bait and not get trapped inside. In over a hundred catches I have had only two cases in which the animal got the bait and got away. The first time was when I had placed the trap on a slope and the squirrel bounced around enough inside the trap to cause it to roll down the hill. A design flaw of Havahart traps is that the door latch mechanism releases if the trap is rolled upside down. From that experience I learned to place my traps on reasonably level spots. More expensive live-catch traps don't have that flaw, but they do cost more and they aren't locally available. I got my traps locally. A couple of months ago I had a second escape, this time from a level placement. By doing a little "Crime Scene Investigation" I was able to piece together a probable explanation. The key piece of evidence was a hole in the ground near the empty trap. Apparently I caught a partly grown gray squirrel which was nearly too big for the trap (a smallish double-door chipmunk/ground squirrel/red squirrel trap) and the animal dug with it claws through the openings in the bottom of trap into the ground and got hold of a small tree root and used that as leverage to tip the trap over. The depth of the gouge in the ground and the marks on the little tree root indicated considerable strength. The next day what appeared to be the same squirrel was chattering noisily at me from a nearby tall tree. It's like he was bragging about his escape from my little trap. He kept up the tirade. So I shot him out of the tree with my 22-caliber airgun. He was a little bit too confident. Josie, is it possible that mice or voles are stealing the bait from your Havahart traps? They are small enough to squeeze between the wires of most Havahart traps, and they like all kinds of bait. And, if an animal just brushes up against the external trigger mechanism, it can be enough to set off the trap even though the animal is not in the trap at the time. Falling twigs, acorns, and sometimes even leaves are enough to set off my small trap, which seems to have a hair trigger. You might want to continue to experiment with your Havahart traps. Normally they are not easily defeated by squirrels. Read the instruction sheets to make sure you are setting the traps properly. Just out of curiosity, what are you using for bait? MM
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PKponder TX Z7B
10 years ago
Never seen that coloration on a squirrel. Maybe he's leucistic or lacks pigmentation on part of his fur?
cynthianovak
Original Author
10 years ago
He's a mystery. In the Spring we spotted him about a block away. Noticed that the folks who moved into that house are away. Guess he goes where the bird seed flows. Haven't seen him this weekend, probably other feeders or I just was out when he dropped in. Thanks for taking a look....c
suetx
10 years ago
There are three of these squirrels around my mom's house in Kansas. One is very similar to the one you showed with a white strip from his head all the way down to his tail. There are also two others that have white spots on their backs. They have been hanging around her yard for several years. I tried to find information on them online, but didn't find anything. She did say that the other squirrels didn't treat them any different, because of their coloring. Got to love my 93 year old mom!
suetx
10 years ago
I found a picture of one of the squirrels.
roselee z8b S.W. Texas
10 years ago
Suetx, thanks for finding and posting the picture. It looks to be marked exactly like the one Cynthia pictured! I'm going to see if anyone on the GW "Name This Animal" forum knows anything about these unusual squirrels.
cynthianovak
Original Author
10 years ago
Suetx ...so there are more of them! I call him Seriously Silver Squirrel. Have not spotted him since last Friday. I would love to know what causes this very distinctive pattern. Thank You!
suetx
10 years ago
Just checked with my mom and she hasn't seen her squirrels for several months. We think they showed up about 8 or 9 years ago, which is pretty amazing. She lives in Wichita, so it isn't a rural area. Hope you all figure out what kind they are.
PKponder TX Z7B
10 years ago
Cynthia, the name Seriously Silver Squirrel just made me laugh out loud :-)
User
10 years ago
Strange ... very strange. Yes, it does look like he's wearing Possum-man's cape. Or a really bad hairpiece.

My guess would be it's a variation of the gene that controls the color of the hairs ... what is normally the reddish pigment is absent, so you have the black parts still there, making the whole thing look greyish. But normally that will affect the whole body.

But I'm not a wildlife biologist. Maybe they have a name for this.
roselee z8b S.W. Texas
10 years ago
No one has replied to the "Name This Animal" query. They are usually pretty fast on the draw over there.
User
10 years ago
Looking as some discussions of squirrel genetics ... the possumback squirrels seem to be the inverse of the "Brevard white squirrels".

Your squirrels are doing it in reverse, with the melanin deficiency restricted to the guard hairs that are normally black-tipped in the red squirrel.
roselee z8b S.W. Texas
10 years ago
It's a beautiful animal and apparently a rare color variation that amazingly showed up in two places many miles from each other. I'm glad I got to see photos of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leucism

Only reply so far ....

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden Web
cynthianovak
Original Author
10 years ago
Roselee thank you for this link. Seems odd that what is described as an apparently random pattern is the same pattern in these two squirrel images. Nature is magical smiling..... BTW Cheeky the parakeet never did let me catch him and I have not seen him for 2 weeks now. Deep sigh. Fortunately I have not seen any feathers. Hope he went with a flock of grackles to the mall.
suetx
10 years ago
Thanks for finding this information. I do think that is exactly what the squirrels have. Of the three that my mom had, only one had the full back marking and the other two were spotted white. We thought they were probably from the same litter. I looked for pictures of the spotted ones, but I must have not taken any. It is amazing that the two squirrels, 350 miles apart would have the same markings. Thanks again for solving this mystery.
roselee z8b S.W. Texas
10 years ago
PkPonder suggested genetic reduced pigmentation, leucism, from the very start. It was just nice to get some verification that it wasn't an exotic pet that escaped. Thank you lazygardens for your input also.

This post was edited by roselee on Fri, Oct 4, 13 at 14:40

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