Mayflower resident, Montie Redenius, captured a photo of a white-tailed squirrel. Said Montie, “We see her/him from our apartment windows when it is running around the yard and trees on the lawn of Montgomery (The Mayflower Community apartment building at 2nd and Broad). There are or were two of them, but we don’t always see them together. We were glad to see it running around a few days after the storm. We were afraid it might have blown away.”
A resident in the Montgomery building, Anne Sunday, added, “I have seen the two of them together hanging out or alone on Park Street, 1st and 2nd avenues and Broad Street. They seem very young.”
Per one Google site, “White-tailed squirrels are uncommon but locally they can become common. They are not albino squirrels. The color variation can come from a recessive trait that will occasionally appear in the genetic line. If the mother has a white tail, that characteristic is carried to offspring.”
In an Iowa Public Radio broadcast (“Iowans Seeing Rare, White-Tailed Squirrels,” November 19, 2012), it was stated, “We’re all too familiar with whitetail deer. But, there also have been a few recent sightings in Iowa of rare white-tailed squirrels. The rodent with the bushy, snow-white tail has been seen in [various parts of Des Moines]. Earlier this year, several were spotted in the town of Osage.”
Vince Evelsizer, a biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, says that the white tail is probably a rare, genetic trait that has emerged naturally. “I am not sure what’s causing it to show up right now,” he says. “I would guess it’s not weather, but I’m not sure. I would guess it’s something that has just emerged in one or two squirrels and maybe those bred with some other squirrels and got a few of them to have it show up in them.”
Evelsizer says the white-tailed trait may stick around and become more common, or it could fade from the squirrel population. He says he’s never seen a whitetail squirrel himself, but anyone who does should consider themselves lucky.
Montie and Suzanne Redenius and Anne Sunday are “lucky.”
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