Squirrels in the News: Wenatchee Squirrels

This article was sent to me by my mother a few weeks ago, but I never blogged about it. It's from a newspaper called the Wenatchee World, Wenatchee being the "big" town in the area where I grew up.

Squirrels: Locals love 'em, but the state doesn't

This article is about an invasion of fox squirrels in East Wenatchee, and the state government's concern that they are an invasive species.

Perhaps this calls for some background. You see, we didn't really have squirrels in the small town where I grew up. We had one that I can remember, and we saw him pretty infrequently. One day the power went out at our house for a couple hours due to a "rodent incident." And we never saw that squirrel again.

So you can imagine how incredibly excited I was when I moved to Minnesota for college and found that my campus was just bursting at the seams with rodents! And they were relatively friendly rodents too, always interested in the last bits of a bagel you were munching on your way to class. I loved them dearly, and this is when my love of squirrels really surfaced.

Other people think I'm crazy. "They're pests!" they say. "They're rabid half the time!" say others (not true). These people grew up with squirrels all over the place; they don't know how good they had it. I've only had eight years of enjoying these ADHD little rodents.

And I should note, that the squirrel population in my hometown has started to rise again. There is a particularly large grey squirrel who has taken up residence near my mother's home, and she is very excited about it. It's genetic, people!