A really super thing happened at our place on Super Bowl XXXV
Sunday, far better than any football game we have ever seen in
our entire lives. It occurred at 10:30 AM when I was working in
my basement darkroom printing some photographs. Suddenly I could
hear Charlotte calling, "There’s a BLACK SQUIRREL in the
front yard!
As soon as I had my last photograph "fixed" properly
and could turn on the lights, out I came to enjoy the spectacle.
What a little beauty she was. At least we soon assumed, by the
several male gray squirrels that appeared to want to sniff every
inch of ground she had been sitting on, that she was a female.
A smaller-than-usual crop of hardwood forest "mast,"
nuts from especially the oaks and beeches, last year has the gray
squirrels in this region very hungry and on the move. They have
no other choice but to get out and search for enough food to keep
them alive. One day there will be six of seven grays in our
front yard and the next day as many as sixteen.
I’ve seen in past years where the gray squirrels in a few
parts of our county chewed the bark on dozens of sugar maple
trees, clear down to the nutritious cambium which they ate and,
in so doing, laid bare the hundreds of small to large branches.
Most of those maples were killed.
The first black squirrel we’ve ever had on our property was
around five years ago and naturally we nicknamed her Blackie.
Yes, our special new visitor goes by the same name. She is a
melanistic phase of a gray squirrel. This is nothing more than
an unusual development of black or nearly black color in her
pelage (coat of fur) occurring either as a characteristic of a
variety or as an individual variation. This is fairly common in
mammals as well as in birds.
Our "Blackie II" is very dark with the exception of
either a lack of hair around her eyes and nose or light brown
hair in those areas. She glistens like silk in the sunlight.
Even when Blackie scampers away from the front yard and tries to
hide, perhaps when we go outdoors, she sticks out like a sore
thumb, a gorgeous sore thumb. It’s easy to see why she would so
easily fall victim to one of her natural enemies including
people, northern goshawks, Cooper’s hawks, barred and
great-horned owls, foxes, coyotes, bobcats (more so in the
North), pine martens and fishers.
The male gray squirrels stopped pestering Blackie #I sometime
in early March. That led us to believe that either she had
already given birth to her young or would do so in the near
future. A pregnant gray squirrel doesn’t look any different than
one that isn’t pregnant, simply in that the unborn young within
their body are so tiny. In fact, once they are born their ears
will not open for another 28 days and their eyes will remain
closed for around 32 days before they see the light of day.
Following a gestation period of between 40 and 45 days, a
litter of usually four or five is born anytime from late February
through April depending upon when mating occurred. Females being
bred for the first time invariably have only one litter while
quite a few of the older females will bear second litters usually
in August.
The great increase in "edge" within wooded areas
throughout much of the state, due largely to what is referred to
as fragmentation or checkerboard development of homes and roads
within a wooded area, has brought about a higher population of
some of the gray squirrels’ competitors (mainly raccoons and
opossums) for den trees.
These mammals, along with troublesome birds such as European
starlings, blue jays and brown-headed cowbirds, thrive within the
edges of woods. Consequently good den trees for the squirrels,
as well as for some species of birds, come at a premium. Leaf
nests, always second best, must now be used by these
underprivileged female squirrels.
One of my favorite references, "Mammals of
Wisconsin," by Jackson, indicates that generally black
squirrels in our state are very rare south of a line through
Baraboo and Reedsburg. Nowhere north of this line are they
thought to be abundant but may be considered fairly common
locally such as near Waupaca where our friends Merlin and Carol
Lang live.
One sees a red squirrel, a gray squirrel, a robin, a chickadee
or a downy woodpecker feeding in the yard and it’s difficult,
unless they are naturally marked in some special way, to know
they are the same creatures returning to your place day after
day.
Our super new friend, Blackie II, quite obviously being the
identical animal each time we see her, reinforces our belief that
indeed it is pretty much the same group of wild animals you see
in your yard or woods from day to day. Furthermore we are
convinced we must all be Partners in Nature – black, brown, red,
yellow, white and gray!
This silky-appearing gray squirrel gets the name
"Blackie" instead because he is a "melanistic phase" gray squirrel – one
colored black either as a characteristic of a variety or an
individual variation.
This column appeared in the Door County Advocate
on 02/09/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Roy Lukes. All rights reserved.
