Mass Squirrel "Migration" Drove Folks Nuts
This brief 1897 newspaper item may look like a tall tale, or evidence of some paranormal Pied Piper among Western Maryland squirrels, but it actually documents a well-known, now-rare natural phenomenon. Migrating Squirrels. As evidence of the theory that squirrels migrate, a novel scene was witnessed on Saturday in the upper portion of Washington County along the Potomac River. A drove of squirrels, of which eye-witnesses estimated there were at least three thousand, swarmed across the country. Their flight was soon discovered, and about three hundred of them were killed by men and boys. Periodic swarms of thousands of squirrels have been documented in North America at least since the Lewis and Clark expedition, and while they are popularly known as “migrations,” which implies a seasonal back-and-forth, they are actually emigrations, one-way movements from one place to another as needed – in the squirrels’ case, in search of food. Vagn Flyger, the late University of Mar...