These aren’t your everyday, ordinary, run-right-out-in-the-middle-of-the-road squirrels. Compared with the gray squirrel, its ubiquitous cousin, the Eastern fox squirrel is twice as large, with a foot-long bushy tail and a variety of color schemes — all gray, all black, black and white, red and gray — that border on the exotic. The largest tree squirrels in North America, fox squirrels are the only ones strong enough to open up a green longleaf pinecone to get at the seeds inside. For many years, a fox squirrel lumbering along a longleaf forest floor was a memorable sighting in parts of eastern North Carolina, but our familiar flatland rodents might be getting neighbors from over the hills. Recent reports of fox squirrels in Ashe, Alleghany, and Watauga counties suggest the species’ Midwestern race could be making a move over the border.
Cook, read, learn, and celebrate what North Carolina has to offer this month.
Our editor in chief reminisces on her first special-occasion restaurant experience in North Carolina.
In Pitt County, a luthier’s handcrafted guitars are sometimes discolored or full of knots; some are shaped liked snakes or shotguns. Each instrument’s story starts with the wood used to make it. And while the past may have left its scars, beauty can be found in the sights and sounds of art.
The Roanoke begins in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia and travels more than 400 miles before emptying into Albemarle Sound, linking countless lives along the way. Follow along as a native son traces the river’s path through northeastern North Carolina, sharing stories of the Roanoke he knows and loves.
