Listen as the pages of the magazine come to life in the Storytellers podcast showcasing the voices of Our State writers. Each podcast episode features a writer reading their column aloud, allowing each distinct voice to shine. Click below to listen to Eleanor read her column aloud. 

The story goes that in Brevard in the mid-1900s, a young Barbara Ann Mull had a pair of white squirrels that her uncle had given her. After Barbara moved away, one squirrel escaped, and her grandfather released the other. Though snowy in appearance, deep down, the two rodents were just eastern gray squirrels in yeti’s clothing. Once freed, they settled down with their wild, gray treemates. Their progeny still skitter among the trees in Brevard.

In Brevard, the white squirrel could be considered the unofficial mascot. Every February, while the rest of the world awaits a groundhog’s prediction, the townspeople look to their resident white squirrel for a different prediction: the Super Bowl winner.  photograph by Tim Robison

Today, Brevard’s famous white squirrels may have the “wow” factor, but look closely at the squirrels around you, wherever you are. North Carolina accommodates a rainbow of eastern gray squirrels whose colors vary across the state: gray with golden tails, orange like pine straw, streaked with rusty brown and flecked with gold. Whether they beguile us or vex us, eastern gray squirrels and their colors can teach us about our own wild world.

• • •

I almost tripped over a squirrel nest once. It had blown out of a tree the night before, a tangle of leaves and branches on the sidewalk with two cold, pink, blind baby squirrels within. I warmed them, put them back in their nest. I watched and waited nearby for a mother who never returned.

Because of the storm, squirrel rehabilitators were overwhelmed. Kelley Inglett, a rehabilitator, taught me to care for the kits with instructions to call her twice a day and later return them to her to “turn them wild.” I learned to feed them as a mother would. The squirrels grew rich fur. Their tails turned bushy, eyes and ears opened, and they became playful.

I began to watch other squirrels with great interest. When you care for something, the world becomes more vibrant that way.

• • •

Our state is home to five tree squirrel species: two flying squirrels, the red squirrels of the mountains, fox squirrels, and eastern gray squirrels, the most common visible urban mammal in North Carolina.

Whether cedar brown or snow white, eastern gray squirrels can’t pass up a snack of sunflower seeds — especially from feeders that look intended for birds. photograph by Todd Pusser

As anyone devoted to baffling them at the bird feeder knows, squirrels are highly intelligent. They sense danger — from taloned birds that snatch them from above to other animals that yank them from below — and communicate to help each other survive the perils of daily life. In addition to sign language — tail positions that send silent messages to kith and kin — squirrels also have a spoken language: A moan means a predator lurks in the skies. A cuck and quaa warns of something possibly lurking below.

Fortunately, squirrels are born with their first line of defense: camouflage. Right now, high in the trees, squirrel kits twist and squirm in their nests, naked save for a light dusting of fur. They will grow. Their fur will fluff out to reveal a landscape of their own world, and ours.

• • •

Kelley released my squirrels deep in a forest without me. I was surprised by how much I missed them. Months later, she called me to come see them. So we went to their new forest home.

“Call them,” she said. “Call them what?” I asked. “Call them what you called them at home.” So I called.

“My squirrellies! My loves!” I called. The forest stayed still. I called again.

In the distance, claws scrabbled on bark. Closer now. Above me, branches began to shake.

In the treetops, their faces appeared, eyes black and wild, fur gray and brown like oak boughs. They climbed down to me, crept across the leaves, and sniffed my waiting fingertips, keeping wary eyes on Kelley. For an instant, they were mine again. Then, a breeze stirred the branches, and in a flash, they were gone.