What happened to all the squirrels?

From what we have observed over the past many years, squirrel ranges tend to be very localized. Families tend to stay close to where they came from, presuming food is found.

We followed one family for many years at the old house: Mamasquirrel, Kinkytail and Fluffytail – nomenclature in true scientific tradition, i.e., strange quark, dumbbell galaxy, etc.

Kt & Ft from the start were, to our move, far too comfortable around people, just hung around with us in the yard, bounced right by like we were benevolent buds while mamasqurirel chirped admonishments. That used to freak out Jared when he was young – they could have rabies, you know! (He eventually accepted them!)

When they first came down the tree – cute, tiny, black furred critters – they all stayed fairly close together. By summer they began to wander off more on their own and by the end of summer Mamasquirrel had been claimed by a Goodyear, no doubt distracted, watching her oblivious duo.

They seemed to do okay, but over the winter we built a little squirrel picnic table and provided corncobs just in case. They never bothered with it much, obviously other people were feeding squirrels since they often had peanuts.

Over the next year or two, we observed that Kinkytail stayed very local, principally in the yard behind us through the yard across the street from us, just as Mamasquirrel had.

Fluffytail went south down the block a bit and was seen less often, a few times a week rather than Kt’s a few times an hour.

There were other squirrels as well, of course, but we never gained enough familiarity with them to understand their habits.

At the new house, we observed similar behavior in the many squirrels, fat squirrels, that dined on the pop tarts, cookies, bread and crackers tossed out by the neighbors, specifically cranky squirrel, a prototypical e. gray squirrel that began barking as soon as anyone entered the yard, and snunk squirrel (named by Will), a black furred squirrel with a blunted, white tipped tail.

They hardly left the dividing fence and adjoined trees.

At any time, old neighborhood or new, there were squirrels, bounding across lawns, traipsing on high wires, scurrying up trees, diving across and also squashed on roads.

Since March the squirrels have disappeared nearly completely. I spend hours every day in the yard and nearly never see a squirrel. We make a note when we do (alive or dead) and it is rare. Not only in our neighborhood but much of the county, from Mom and Dad’s place in Mt. Clemens, up to my co-workers home in New Baltimore, there has been squirrelpocolypse.

As the squirrel population seemed to precipitously drop we spoke with a naturalist. She told us it was normal for squirrels to seemingly disappear in the spring as food became more available in deep woods, they sought mates and began to raise their young.

We continue to watch and they are clearly gone. Last week, there was a story disseminated that the squirrel population was being significantly reduced due to the increased coyote population in sub-urban areas.

We did have a nice band of coyotes den-ning out by Metro beach but the DNR will tell you they have moved on.

Others who are not the DNR will tell you they moved in metal cages loaded onto trucks, so that coyote story was just a silly thing said so as to say something.

It seems more likely that some disease or environmental contaminant is responsible. E. gray squirrel are known to carry a pox that generally does not affect them, but perhaps added stress the poor weather and heavy spring flooding weakened their immunity.

There was also a squirrel that we named Xombiesquirrel at Mom’s this spring, that was clearly, alarmingly afflicted with something – perhaps mange, which can certainly devastate squirrel populations.

More likely, though, it is an environmental pollutant, disseminated throughout the watershed from sewage and waste stabilization ponds by the near continuous flooding during March, April and May (30+ inches of rain during that period).

That seems most probable by reason of another unhappy observation, that the frogs and toads are gone.

American toad calls have remained ubiquitary in contrast to the other toads' and frogs' and the gray tree frogs, too, were very prominent last year, here.

We hear zero frog calls, now.