Kathy has been telling me – for what seems like years – that she has seen Black Squirrels on some of her trips to Lincoln, NE. Of course I was never with her during those sightings. She would take me – and my camera – to the locations where she had repeatedly – so she said – seen these elusive animals. Never a sighting.
Well, that all changed Sunday. On our way home from church, I asked Kathy to navigate us to “the location” for Black Squirrels. When we got there – even though I was driving, she made me wear a blindfold because the location is so secret. We got there and… no Black Squirrels. I was prompted to park for a few minutes to see if anyone would show. Sure enough, after a minute or so I heard Kathy say, “There’s one!”
He was busy burying nuts for the winter. I drove slowly up to the curb where he was hard at work and got several clicks before he ran up the tree and stretched out on a branch to survey his work.
Black Squirrels are a melanistic subgroup of the eastern grey squirrel and represent 1 out of 10,000 squirrels in North America. This makes them “rare.” Most Americans have never seen a Black Squirrel, as reported by sources on the internet.
36th & Calvert area in Lincoln!
If she’d told me that sooner I would not have needed the blindfold!