Lots of my family lives in or near Olney. White squirrels are dirt common there. Since they’re true albinos, they tend to be partly blind or at least see with some difficulty. Aunt used to have a handful of them she’d hand feed at her back door every day.
We have an albino squirrel on my campus here at RPI. Actually, it’s been here so long that most people think we are on the second one, the son or daughter of the first. It’s official webpage is here. I’ve seen it a few times, and it’s cool cause he’s a celebrity around here. It’s kinda good luck to have him cross your path, the aanti-black cat, if you will.
We heard of the white squirrels of Olney a few years back and actually made a lengthy detour on the way back to Chicago to see them. Based on the way it was described in some of the literature, we expected white squirrels frolicking in the streets, chattering in the trees and generally running rampant throughout the town. We were sorely disappointed when we walked around the park that supposedly contains the highest concentration of white squirrels for nearly 2 hours and didn’t see a single one. The closest I came to a white squirrel was a urinal conversation with an 80+ year old gentleman that remarked, “Before they were protected we used to eat ‘em… didn’t taste no different then the regular ones.” Of course, that might explain why we didn’t see any….
Must have been the time of year, Pipper. I go there every year on Labor day weekend for our family reunion, and there are thousands around at that time.
I went to the University with a woman who came from Olney.
She started rambling on about it being the home of the white squirrels and we all thought it was a rock group.
She finally showed us some postcards.
I asked her, in the name of integration, if she thought it would be a good idea to bus in some black squirrels.
She didn’t find it funny.
DMark
Las Vegas - home of the white tigers (thanks to Siegrfried & Roy)
And on the other side of things, there’s a park here in Minneapolis that has quite the growing population of black squirrels. The first one showed up about 2 years ago, and when I took a walk there this summer, I saw about a dozen of them. So either the lady squirrells really fancied him, or there were more that no one else noticed.
As far as I know, it’s not a different breed, but a local mutation on color. Pretty neat, and really, pretty cute, too.