Tree squirrel
[7][9] Some homeowners resort to more interesting ways of dealing with this problem, such as collecting and placing fur from pets such as domestic cats and dogs in attics.
[7] Once established in a nest, squirrels ignore fake owls and scarecrows, along with bright flashing lights, loud noises, and ultrasonic or electromagnetic devices.
However, squirrels must leave the nest to obtain food and water (usually daily, except in bad weather), affording an opportunity to trap them or exclude them from re-entering.
[7][9] To discourage chewing on an object, it can be coated or covered with something to make it distasteful: for instance a soft cloth doused with chili pepper paste or powder.
[12] An alternative method is to wait until squirrels have left in search of food, and then close up all their access openings, or to install one-way trap doors or a carefully angled pipe.
[9] Attempting to get rid of all squirrels in a neighborhood is generally a futile goal; the focus instead should be on physically excluding them from places where they can do damage.
If they touch a high voltage conductor and a grounded portion of the enclosure at the same time, they are electrocuted, and often cause a short circuit that shuts down equipment.
[19] Squirrels cause economic losses to homeowners, nut growers, and forest managers in addition to damage to electric transmission lines.
In regions where squirrels are plentiful, tire-flattened roadkill is a common sight on roadways, especially in the spring and fall, when there is a fresh crop of young rodents.
[21][22][23] Evasive maneuvers are difficult since squirrels are much more agile and have much quicker reaction times than motorists in heavy vehicles; the majority of vehicular encounters end with no harm to either party.
[24] An effort to mitigate these hazards to both squirrels and humans is the Nutty Narrows Bridge in Longview, Washington, listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Squirrels living in parks and campuses[26] in cities have learned that humans are typically a ready source of food, either deliberately or from careless disposal of surplus.
In the Middle Ages the red squirrel was hunted for its blue-gray winter coat, traditionally called vair, which now lends its name to a heraldic fur.
[41][42][43] Specifically, Britons are cooking with the invasive gray squirrel, which is praised for its low fat content and the fact that it comes from free range sources.
[41] Due to the difficulty of a clean kill and other factors, the majority of squirrel eaten in the UK is acquired from professional hunters, trappers and gamekeepers.
"[41] As with other wild game and fish species, the consumption of squirrels that have been exposed to high levels of pollution or toxic waste poses a health risk to humans.
[45] In 1997, doctors in Kentucky published a paper in the Lancet that considered a possible association between the local tradition of consuming squirrel brains and five cases of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, a rare but serious prion-based disorder.
The authors posed this as a mere possibility, unconfirmed by either post-mortem analysis of the patients' brain tissue, or identification of a contagious prion agent in squirrels.
[51][52] In the Ramayana, an ancient Sanskrit epic poem, a squirrel assists in constructing a bridge from India to Sri Lanka to help Rama rescue his wife Sita.
[54][53][55] According to Richard W. Thorington, Jr. and Katie E. Ferrell, this legend may have originated from the red squirrel's habit of giving a "scolding alarm call in response to danger", which some Norsemen may have imagined as insults.
[55] In Europe during the Middle Ages, squirrels were sometimes used in bestiaries as symbols of greed and avarice on account of their storing of nuts,[55] but, in the nineteenth century, British natural history books often praised them as thrifty for this same reason.
[57] First aired in 1998,[58] this episode turned out to be one of the most popular ones of the series,[59] prompting rebroadcasts and a lead position on the two-CD compilation Crimebusters + Crossed Wires: Stories from This American Life.
[60][61] A project run by Untamed Science is seeking to report and document the occurrence of both white squirrels, albinos, and other piebald morphs.
[65] Other towns that have reported white squirrel populations in North America (although not necessarily competing to be the "official" white squirrel capital) include Bowling Green, Kentucky; Columbia, Mississippi;[66] DeForest, Wisconsin;[67] Stratford, Connecticut;[68] and some of the snowbelt cities in the Western, Central and Finger Lakes regions of New York State (Buffalo, Rochester, Ithaca and Syracuse).
In Kentucky, the University of Louisville has established its own chapter of the Albino Squirrel Preservation Society, which maintains contact with its members and interested parties through a Facebook group by that name.
The university has an open policy to give away a free t-shirt to anyone who takes a photograph of a white squirrel on campus grounds and brings it to the administration offices.
"[60] Albert Meier, another biology professor at Western Kentucky University, added that: "... white squirrels rarely survive in the wild because they can't easily hide.
"[60] A story in which a Nāga shapeshifts into a white or albino squirrel, is killed by a hunter, and is magically transformed into meat equal to 8,000 cartloads figures prominently in the folklore of rocket festival traditions and the origin of Nong Han Kumphawapi Lake in Northeast Thailand.
the red squirrel's range has been reduced to the coniferous forests in Scotland, and in England's Formby, the Lake District, Brownsea Island, and the Isle of Wight.
