You are about the enjoy the final blog post in Sara Gagné’s Urban Ecology Nature Neighborhood Series for 2025, and I want you to know up front that this is probably my favorite post that she has done for us.
While there are many different types of scientists, I think most people expect all scientists to be unafraid of the unknown, unafraid of the natural world, and unafraid of trying new things, and that is 100% not true. I have always loved being outdoors and experiencing nature in all forms, but I was deathly afraid of spiders for at least the first half of my life. I even had a professor in college who experienced my very visceral reaction to the eight-legged creatures first-hand and excused me from a live arachnid lab. But after having my first of three children, it occurred to me that I needed to deal with that fear in a more rational way so that I didn’t pass that fear on to my kids, so I started to learn more about them. I read, I took pictures, I made observations, and what I learned was that spiders are FASCINATING creatures. My lack of engagement and understanding had tainted my ability to see all of the amazing things that spiders do.
So, with that knowledge, go forth and learn, not only about squirrels, but about how scientists often have very human reactions to nature, and that learning through observation with an open mind are the best remedies for coming closer to the many misunderstood elements in our world.
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Written By Sara Gagné, Urban Ecologist, UNCC
In this final installment of the 2025 Explore Your Nature Neighborhood Summer Series, I will introduce you to the squirrel species you are likely to encounter in urban and suburban settings in North Carolina, two citizen science projects focused on tracking squirrel occurrence and evolution, and last but not least, the squirrel cartoons my 6-year-old son and I drew in our nature journals.
But first, I need to get something off my chest. As an urban ecologist, this is hard for me to admit, but I need to be honest. Here goes: my first reaction to the sight or sound of a squirrel is disdain. Not appreciation of the beauty of a wild animal, or wonder at its evident intelligence, or even awe at the acrobatics that I’m sure are the envy of Cirque du Soleil performers, but at best, mild irritation and at worst… well, I won’t go there. As a born and bred big city girl, I grew up with squirrels that decimated bird feeders and flower beds, ate out of trash cans or tried to steal my food, and generally made a nuisance of themselves. Later, as a postdoc in Madison, Wisconsin, I was introduced to northern flying squirrels, which I assumed lived in the black walnut trees surrounding my apartment complex. After a few confusing weeks of my trash can under the kitchen sink being raided, I began to have doubts about our separate living quarters. My fears became reality one evening when I opened a kitchen drawer to grab a ladle and found a flying squirrel looking up at me. Maybe it wanted to borrow the corkscrew.
Despite my bumpy track record with squirrels, my attitude towards them has started to improve, all thanks to Christine Goforth, the Head of Citizen Science at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and her Project Squirrel video. In the video, Christine explains that squirrels are important environmental indicators that can tell us a lot about how human land use is affecting wildlife at broad spatial scales. Christine also does a great job of describing the two species of squirrel you are most likely to see in your yard or park in North Carolina: the eastern gray squirrel and the fox squirrel. To my discredit, I’d never heard of fox squirrels before watching the video, having simply lumped all tree squirrels into one big ‘Squirrel’ category in my head.
Inspired by Christine, I ventured into the UNC Charlotte Botanical Gardens to give my relationship with squirrels one more try. I came across an eastern gray squirrel carrying a plump acorn in its mouth. It dropped from a small bridge into the stream bed below where it started digging into the leaf litter. Before long, it jumped onto a fallen tree trunk that led up the opposite bank and froze, still with the acorn gripped tightly in its teeth. I now know that the squirrel pretended to hide the acorn for my benefit, a behavior known as ‘deceptive caching’ that is meant to confuse would-be thieves. The squirrel then leaped onto the bank and moved away, digging here and there as it went. I must admit its movements were graceful and effortless amid the tangle surrounding the stream, almost as if it was water moving down the ravine.
I basically stalked the second squirrel I came across. From my perch on a bench, my eyes were drawn to where a squirrel was scattering the leaf litter. It moved back and forth, possibly from one cache of nuts to another, disappearing from sight now and then as its fur blended into the overhanging vegetation. It clearly knew the forest floor intimately, stopping at specific locations in a way that spoke of familiarity. Despite my clearly unwanted attention – I tried to get close enough for a photograph several times – this squirrel never deviated from its purpose. It was a fascinating sight.
Christine’s video also includes a description of the citizen science project Project Squirrel. Using data submitted by Chicago residents, Project Squirrel discovered that eastern gray and fox squirrels occupy different areas of a city. Eastern gray squirrels prefer densely populated areas with many oak trees and few cats, where they outcompete fox squirrels because they are more efficient foragers. Fox squirrels, on the other hand, are more common in the suburbs and don’t seem to mind higher cat densities, perhaps because of their relatively large size – they are about twice the size of eastern gray squirrels.
Project Squirrel is no longer accepting observations, but Squirrel Mapper is. Squirrel Mapper is focused on figuring out why the black morph of the eastern gray squirrel – some individuals of the species are completely black – persists in cities despite having disappeared from most of the species range over the last 100 years. I highly recommend participating in Squirrel Mapper, which uses several platforms to collect data, including iNaturalist and Zooniverse. So far, results from Squirrel Mapper indicate that the survival of black and gray morphs is the same in cities, but lower for the black morph in rural areas. Black eastern gray squirrels may be more visible to predators in rural areas – picture a black squirrel on a gray oak tree trunk – whereas in cities, there may be relatively few squirrel predators overall, making the difference in appearance moot.
To top off my squirrel journey, my son and I attempted our very first squirrel cartoons using the instructions in the Squirrel Comics activity. I drew my first encounter with the squirrel deceptively caching an acorn and my son drew two squirrels he saw squabbling in a tree. As we drew, we talked about squirrels and I realized how much my attitude towards them had changed. I was now curious about squirrels, having realized that there might be more to them than digging up bulbs or eating out of trash cans. During my research for this post, my curiosity was heightened by an article describing the introduction of the eastern gray squirrel to cities in the late nineteenth century. Previously, they had been restricted to forests. Who knew?
My changed view of squirrels is a result of taking the time to look closely and find out more about them. Throughout this summer series, we’ve done the same with flowers, migratory birds, vultures, forest bathing, luna moths, salamanders, trees, and phenology. I hope your view of nature where you live has expanded in new and exciting ways just like mine has. If it has, you now know that there is always more to explore.
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Final Commentary from April, NC Science Trail
I greatly appreciate Sara’s commitment to this Summer Series. I have enjoyed every single post throughout the summer as I have questioned my personal engagement, my powers of observation, and my curiosity toward nature in an urban environment. I have learned to view urban nature very differently, and that has truly helped me grow, both as a scientist and a human. I look forward to more opportunities to expand my horizons on the topic in the future. Thank you Sara!