The squirrels — those of west Little Rock anyway — seem to have taken a cue from their cousins running amok inside the First Self-Righteous Church and gone, well, berserk.
Even the Presbyterian squirrels are acting nutty.
(Readers younger than 50 are encouraged to search “Ray Stevens” in whichever music-download platform the kids use these days.)
For the past two years, the squirrels have seemed way more active, much bigger and, some of them, decidedly more reddish — at least to my eyes. The ones who perform along the fenceline outside my office window apparently have some theater blood in their DNA, and the ones who live in the canopy of my backyard — though almost certainly native-to-Arkansas eastern grays — aspire to become squirrels of the flying variety. The Flying Squirrel Wallendas, if you will.
Why wait till the trunk runs out before disembarking from a tree when you can simply hop off 10, 15 feet in the air, land on your feet and go about your business? Because they can, I suppose.
Squirrels have always been nutty, of course, but over the past couple of years, their behavior has been decidedly more Almond Joy than Mounds. (Again, kids, Google it, or better yet, Duck Duck Go it. “Duck” it? No, probably not.)
Though the squirrels that catch my attention seem more bold, larger and increasingly red, I know they are typical eastern gray squirrels. The American red squirrels are generally smaller than the eastern grays that make up the eastern half of upper North America. Plus, the reds have tufts at the tops of their ears. They are the Tolkien elves — or, for that matter, the Roddenberry Vulcans — of squirreldom.
Red squirrels’ North American range forms a giant, inverted U that takes in Appalachia, New England, the Great Lakes, upper Midwest, almost all of Canada and the Rockies.
But the eastern grays? Take a map of North America, and draw a line from Fargo to Corpus Christi, include a couple of quick Canuck excursions to Saskatoon and Ottawa, and everything east of that line is eastern gray country.
Are the American reds launching incursions into eastern gray territory, clamoring over the walls like the zombies in World War Z or the Moroccans in Ceuta? Are they infiltrating eastern gray communities in the South because they like their acorns covered in gravy? Or are the Canadian American reds infiltrating the U.S. American red communities and launching these incursions, knowing the U.S. reds will be blamed? You know, a component to the Great 2026 Tariff War.
Sadly, with a little dogged determination, I could probably qualify for federal grants to fund my quest for an answer.
