Fox Squirrels and Philosophy
You don’t need a degree in biology to see that invasive species occupy a peculiar moral position: they are the one part of nature we are told not to love. As a philosopher of science, my ears prick up whenever I notice moral complexities emerging among scientists. It makes me wonder: when it comes to invasive species, is the science shaping our moral attitudes or are those attitudes shaping the work of ecologists and conservationists?
—Carlos Santana, “Conservation’s Prejudice,” published in Aeon: (https://aeon.co/essays/ecologys-war-on-invasive-species-isnt-science?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-us)
A feisty redhead visits our backyard bird feeder every morning. If there was a wildlife Olympics, this colorful character might win the gymnastics medal. He hangs upside down in his effort to snaffle peanuts and sunflower seeds out of the hanging tray, and eats them while inverted, defying gravity in his own small way. He’s smart, agile, adaptable, fearless, has a colorful vocabulary, and is, like most of us, an immigrant.
This species, considered to be invasive, has been reviled, trapped, shot, and poisoned, but it continues to thrive. Eastern fox squirrels, Sciurus niger—the scientific name means “shadow tail”—are native to the Eastern and Southern US.
They arrived in Los Angeles around the turn of the twentieth century. The popular story is that fox squirrels were imported to entertain the Civil Veterans Home in what is now Westwood and that they escaped and naturalized. There is a newspaper account that verifies that squirrels were acquired for the Soldiers’ Home in June of 1906: “They are natives of Texas and are intended for the veterans’ amusement.”
In the 2015 essay “Wars, Squirrels, and the Making of Suburban Los Angeles,” author D.J. Waldie speculates that they may have also been destined for the stew pot. Squirrel was a popular menu item in the American South.
“Whether to animate the landscape or make squirrel stew, the veterans set fox squirrels loose on the grounds of the home,” Waldie writes. (It’s a fun essay and can be read in its entirety at (https://www.pbssocal.org/history-society/wars-squirrels-and-the-making-of-suburban-los-angeles)
However, it’s a safe bet that fox squirrels were already making themselves at home by the time the veterans received their gift box of squirrels. There are ads in the LA Times as early as 1902 offering pet fox squirrels for sale, suggesting a modest fad for pet squirrels. There were no restrictions on keeping wildlife for pets or transporting them into California.
However they arrived, these smart, adaptable animals soon settled down to live the good life in Southern California. Fox squirrels began appearing in Westside gardens around the same time. Waldie writes that, “by 1910, the squirrels were in San Pedro, a distance of 25 miles. By the 1930s, they were in Ventura, almost 50 miles away. In 2004, they were in Claremont.”
Judging from the bounties on the tails of the native Western gray squirrel that were advertised in publications from the same period, the first fox squirrels in LA may have faced little competition once they escaped into the wild.
Native gray squirrels have evolved to eat primarily acorns (their scientific name, Sciurus griseus, tells us that their tails are gray, not that we needed to be told). The rapid transformation of Southern California’s oak woodland and coastal chaparral into orange groves and housing tracts suited the fox squirrel far better than its native cousin.
Fox squirrels are voracious omnivores willing to try anything once. Their diet includes not only nuts, seeds and fruit, and the nutrient-dense buds of deciduous trees, but also insects, small reptiles, eggs, and sometimes even birds and mice—if the squirrel has an opportunity to catch them.
The fox squirrel remains a mostly urban animal. Its strongholds are suburban gardens, college campuses, city parks, and agricultural areas, especially orchards and vineyards. Fox squirrels arrived in San Francisco, Fresno, and other California population centers about the same time they began colonizing Los Angeles gardens.
In Topanga and throughout the Santa Monica Mountains these squirrels are familiar backyard residents who compete with the songbirds at the bird feeder, and with the coyotes and opossums for garden fruit.
Fox squirrels are relatively solitary, except during mating and when young squirrels first leave the nest. Males usually depart after finding a mate, and take no part in raising their offspring.
Mature females usually have two litters, one in late winter/early spring; and a second in late summer/early autumn, although in California, squirrels can have litters almost any time.
Squirrel kits require a lot of care. They are born blind and hairless and are not ready to venture forth on their own until they are around four months old. Young squirrels may disperse if resources are scarce, but they’ve also been observed denning with their mother for their first year.
The first year of life is precarious for fox squirrels—they are vulnerable to predators like foxes, hawks and owls—but an animal that successfully survives to adulthood can live a long life—8+ years for males, 12+ years for females. In captivity, fox squirrels have lived to be nearly 20.
Fox squirrels prefer tree cavities for nesting, but will also build drays— nests made out of leaves and twigs—if no cavity is available. The author once saw a squirrel dray that incorporated a pair of men’s socks—the white kind with red stripes—intertwined with leaves. She has also seen fox squirrels repurpose an old pack rat nest that was conveniently built well off the ground in a small tree. One of her colleagues at TNT just found the stuffing from her lawn furniture cushions at the top of a backyard tree—a nice cozy nest for young squirrels.
Fox squirrels are also happy to set up shop in the attic, if they can find a way to get in, which is not ideal for their human neighbors. A family of squirrels—collectively a “dray” or a “scurry”—can sound like a herd of hippos on the rooftop. The best way to keep squirrels out of the attic is to make sure all gaps and openings are sealed or covered in metal mesh hardware cloth.
There is no way to keep squirrels out of the backyard bird feeder. These ingenious acrobats are expert snatch and grab artists. The only real approach is to sit back and watch their antics, although limiting the amount of feed set out each day and sweeping up fallen seeds and shells frequently can help control how many creatures the feeder attracts.
If sunflowers unexpectedly begin to grow in the garden, or oak seedlings sprout from the pots on the patio, that’s probably thanks to the resident squirrels. They cache extra food for later and sometimes forget where they put it. Who knows how many mighty oak trees had their start as a squirrel’s snack?
For a mostly solitary animal, the fox squirrel has an extensive, and one suspects rather rude, vocabulary. An angry squirrel will vocalize extensively at anyone or anything that annoys it, including the dog, the person who inconsiderately forgot to fill the bird feeder this morning, the people out for a walk under the squirrel’s favorite tree, or the scrub jays who refuse to be intimidated by the squirrel’s barrage of abusive language and ferocious tail twitching.
Those of us who enjoy the presence of wildlife in our gardens—even non-native wildlife—find joy in having these livewires around, but Eastern fox squirrels are not loved by all. They have become agricultural pests. They compete with native squirrels and also with songbirds for resources and habitat. But humans brought them here, turned them loose, put them into the environment, the same way we brought non-native crops and garden plants and set about turning the native habitat into an ideal home not only for humans but for species like the fox squirrel.
There are no easy answers for how to address invasive species. That fox squirrel, the one that hangs upside down from the bird feeder and scolds the dogs from the safety of tree branches above the patio, is a miniature case study in the philosophical conundrum posed by Carlos Santana quoted at the start of this feature: science vs. morality; nature vs. that inflexible, puritanical, and perpetually binary mindset that colonized not only the American landscape but the American consciousness: good and evil, black and white, native and non-native, right and wrong.
The Eastern fox squirrel is an intelligent, adaptable, and highly successful species that has made itself at home in our environment, just like we have. It’s hard to look at something so vibrantly, joyously, ferociously alive, so colorful in looks and vocabulary, in just black and white. And like us, it doesn’t ultimately matter where this squirrel came from, it’s here to stay. No going back. So, put the peanuts out and enjoy the show.
Fox squirrels and their native cousins, Western gray squirrels, are nesting right now. It’s important to carefully check for the presence of all kinds of nests—bird and squirrel—before pruning or cutting trees.
