White Squirrels of Exeter

I never gave much thought to the color of squirrels until I heard a report on the CBC about the presence of white squirrels in Exeter , Ontario .  In most parts of the world, most squirrels are grey, some are black and very few are white.  These little white guys are not albinos but actually colored white (some are a very light shade of beige or off-white) and  have normal colored eyes (versus the classic albino red).  This coloration is said to be the result of a genetic mutation.

Exeter has put little white squirrels on their lampposts, side-

profiles on garbage cans, iron cutouts in a variety of poses up and down the main strip and even hosts a White Squirrel Festival once a year.  With all of this fanfare, we were expecting to roll into town, hit the park, take a bunch of great pictures, and head on out again, but this was not the case...

We couldn't find any in the local park despite sitting still in a variety of locations. A local woman who had come to the park to read in peace (so much for peace with us snooping about!) suggested this was because there is not a lot of food lying about the park.  She suggested that our best strategy would be to head down into a more residential environment, just off the main strip.  She directed us to an area full of detached homes facing a little playground.  We grabbed a seat on a park bench and began our stake-out. [Imagine Mission Impossible theme song playing in your mind at this point]. Within 15 minutes or so, we did finally catch a glimpse of two little guys, off in the distance on someone’s front lawn, but whenever we tried to approach them, they bolted away... not even paying a lick of attention to the peanuts we had for them. They were totally camera shy! Of course, we were stalking them (I would be afraid of us too) but city squirrels seem to have a much thicker skin!

it took us about an hour and a half to get a few half decent pictures. We saw 5 or 6 different white squirrels but only got pictures from two.

If you want to try your luck in the same residential-area park that we did, here are some directions for you: From Main St., turn left (or West) onto Huron Street West . The park is on the left-hand side about 2 streets up. The squirrels will probably be hanging out on lawns or in trees near houses rather than in the park itself. 

Happy Squirrel Scoping!