On Oct 24, 2004, at 9:21, Webwalker (Susan in Ohio) wrote:
About 20 years ago, a community of black squirrels were living about 20 miles north of here--and were prevalent. No one I knew had ever seen black squirrels before. Now there are black squirrels where I live--both black and brown.
Do any of you have black squirrels, and if so, do you know if they drive out the other squirrels?
The first - and only - time I ever saw "black" (very dark bown actually) squirrels was at the campus of the Princeton (New Jersey) Univeristy. I was entranced, and my son - who knew I had a "thing" about squirrels - happily pointed out to me the two other colours. There were the big and scruffy grey ones, predominant (and how! <g>) in Virginia, and the "red" darlings I used to feed in Warsaw parks as a child. There were about a third of each kind on the campus (according to my son) but the black ones had a slight edge -- people liked them best, and fed them most often. Especially since they were the smallest overall; teenagers do have some soft and sentimental spots left, and cheer for the obvious loosers :) The grey squirrels - biggest, and most commonly known to most of the U population - were getting the shortest shrift in the "ooh, cute, toss it a bite" stakes.
So, it depends on your point of view :) On the Princeton campus, the black squirrels were living the life of Riley and, possibly, driving out the other kinds.
In the wild... The grey squirrel is the biggest and the most vicious; in the areas where the red and the grey contest the territory (northern parts of US), the greys are winning; they destroy the nests of the reds, and bodily toss out the reds and their babies down to the ground. They also - if one were to judge by the fur colour - intermarry; all of our (VA) squirrels are grey, but some are greyer than others :) Some have definite golden and red streaks...
It is my opinion that the black squirrels do not have the chance of a snowball in hell in the red/grey/black competition *in the wild*. They're the smallest of the 3, and the mildest. But, it's possible that they might be driving out the other two simply by the "cute appeal" they have to humans. Me, I'd love to see either the red ones or the black ones "invade" my territory; I love the grey ones by default only. But I'm told that my chances of seeing that come to pass is also comparable to the afore-mentioned snowball; the greys are pushing the reds farther and farther north, so the chances of the reds ever showing up in Virginia are nil. And the blacks have never been native in this area, so I do not expect to see them here, either...
Although... Of course... One never knows... :) Gophers aren't native to Virginia; the first and only time I saw them was in Colorado, in late October of '96? - a whole valley and the mountains surrounding it seemed to be *moving*, and I was told it was gophers... Some 4-5 yrs ago, the local paper reported *a* "gopher sighting" - someone had brought one and let it loose. That liberated one must have been preggie,' cause they'd been sighted as road kill ever since :)
--- Tamara P Duvall http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland) Healthy US through The No-CARB Diet: no C-heney, no A-shcroft, no R-umsfeld, no B-ush.
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