Evening star., 1946-09-10
This and That
By Charles E. TraceveLl.
ARLINGTON, Va.

ARLINGTON, Va.
Dear Sir:
Here is an editorial on SQUIRRELS
from the Wall Street journal which
may interest you.
Incidentally, do squirrels lose their
sense of thrift and fail to store food
for winter when they are we'll fed by
their human friends the year around?
With congratulations for the ex-
cellent handling of your very interest
ing column, l am
Cordially yours, r. w. E."
No amount of feeding can take away
from the squirrel his natural instincts.
But we must remember that the gray
squirrel, the dominant one around here,
does not store food except by hiding it
in the ground.
1t is the red squirrel which stores I'D
grub in hollow logs.
This, the red form, Is the traditional
squirrel whose busy thoughtfulness for
the future has been held up to strug-
Cling humans for centuries.
The gray form-which also includes
the black and white phases-is no such
fellow
He is OF gayer, more improvident
type, one who takes life as it comes
and is not too serious about it.
He does bury a bit of food but
it is unlikely that he ever finds more
than fourth of it, what with rains,
other squirrels and natural decay.
Some of the walnuts he hides grow
into trees, and often in the most un-
desirable places, as many q house,
holder has found, when he discovered
full-fiedged walnut growing few inches
from his house wall.
No. our squirrels certainly do not
lose such sense of thrift as they possess
simply because We, as interested hui
mans, at some time or other in our
brief lives become interested enough to
put out food for them.
Thousands Of years lie behind the
squirrel habits. Feeding by humans Is
but an incident in their lives. The thing
may seem momentous enough to the
kind-hearted person involved, but to
the squirrel 1t is no more than a sort
of happy intrusion.
This born comic-for such the gray
squirrel is by nature, one of the few
such in all the world Of living things
isn't worried when you stop putting out
peanuts for him.
He goes right back to finding his
own. He knows not only where he has
hidden some of it, but where his fellow
citizens have cached food
As stated, he may not find more than
a quarter OF what is hidden, but it is
enough to serve him, even in the hardest
winters.
There are, it is estimated, some 200
hIorE Snllirrely m
ington. Centers for these are the Ia
koma Park section, Arlington County,
Va, and at Connecticut avenue Just
below Chevy Chase Circle.
A few of these black forms spread out
over the surrounding territory but they
are not always welcomed by the grays.
The black is known as mechanism, or
blackness, and does not form A new
species, but simply different colora-
tion of the same species.
1t is believed that there are, at any
one time. about two dozen white or
albino squirrels here
This phase is very pretty. but the
animals are even wilder than the blacks.
| None Of them. however, Is as skittish
| as the red squirrel The reds are less
tame. bite quicker, and are q greater
hazard to bird life.
We may count ourselves fortunate
hereabouts that the prevailing squirrel
| is the gray, whose natural bent for
| comedy amuses SO many In our parks
! and at home In the suburbs.
People have labored for years to
devise "squirrelproof" bird-feeding sta
tions, and the few who have succeeded
have failed to attain much. The gray
SQUIRREL is happy rascal who is ac-
cepted by the songbirds on an equal
footing. II the birds can get along with
him, surely the watching human ought
to manage II.