The big question is “Why?”! Recently several residents of the Queens borough of New York City have reported unprovoked squirrel attacks. This isn’t following any sort of interaction, like feeding or chasing, so everyone is very puzzled. (Note: Fortunately, per the local health authority, squirrels aren’t typically carriers of rabies, though at least one victim opted to get a rabies shot.)
Do you ever labor long and tend your fruit trees with loving care, watering and feeding, trimming and pruning, in hopes of a bounteous harvest — only to have squirrels come and take the fruit?
You know the explanation, don’t you? They can’t help it. They’re vampsquirrels…as relayed in this squirrelly story.
We’re taking a bit of a side trip here to another branch of the order Rodentia, from the suborder Sciuromorpha (wherein squirrels dwell) to the suborder Castorimorpha, Genus Castor, to our friend the American beaver.
This article from The Atlantic magazine (June 2012), includes a tale from the 1940s when Idaho’s Department of Fish and Game dropped parachuted crates of beavers to repopulate the wilderness and — quite progressively — improve the ecological balance thereby. (Current application: think climate change.)
That’s the number of squirrels counted in the tally by volunteers at New York’s Central Park.
Read this great article from Smithsonian.com which includes a succinct history of the creatures, from the 1800s on, including a mob gawking at an escaped pet squirrel in 1856.