Hello fellow nature lovers,

As some of you may know, the beloved squirrel that people often saw outside the Fays was recently run over 🙁 So I have decided to dedicate this post to a memorial of the life of that squirrel.

I believe I first encountered this squirrel outside the lawn of Dartmouth hall, sniffing around for a place to cache his nut. I was intrigued by him because of his uniquely long tail – it wasn’t bushy like other squirrels’ tails I had seen, it was more wiry and skinny. The squirrel still had the characteristic white stripe around its tail, and I never questioned if it was a grey squirrel – just why the tail was a different shape and length than usual. The squirrel was displaying typical caching behavior, and I believe he was looking for a place to cache his acorn. He eventually decided on a tree over by Thorton Hall, a good shady spot but not so smart with regards to pilferage avoidance.

first sighting

I started seeing this squirrel around more, and a couple of my next observations centered around him as well. I again saw him caching outside of Dartmouth Hall (re: my last post). Here is a photo from that sighting.

squirrel eating acorn

This time, the squirrel cached his acorn closer to Dartmouth Hall. As I’m thinking about it now, that might be an effective place to put an acorn as there’s typically a lot of foot traffic there and many squirrels might not think to dig around that area.

Another time I encountered this squirrel it was jumping across the lawn of Dartmouth Hall, very frantically. His characteristic long tail was moving all about as he sniffed the ground and patted some dirt. I wondered whether he was foraging or caching, but then saw him pause and start chewing on an acorn, as shown in the picture below.

squirrel eating another acorn

Sadly, I didn’t see the squirrel too much after this sighting, but I will always remember him by his uniquely long tail. Does anyone else have any photos or interesting stories about this squirrel? Comment below!

Best,

Sami