The legend of the Oregon blue-tailed squirrel lives on
I recently moved to a new home and have noticed I have a blue-tailed squirrel living in my backyard! His belly is white and most of his top half is regular gray/brown squirrel colors.
At first I thought maybe someone had spray-painted him, but it has been several weeks and he still is as blue as ever.
I am writing you because you published an article about a blue-tailed squirrel in Oregon back in 2016. Just curious if you had any thoughts on this.
Do you think there is such a thing as a blue-tailed squirrel? Has anyone else ever reached out to you about it? I am just so fascinated by this little guy!
— Ashley Schrom, Beaverton, Oregon that column, I’ve heard from folks from all over the Bay Area and the rest of country who also have seen blue-tailed squirrels or have sent me links to stories about other blue-tails throughout the world.
Does this mean we have a new species of squirrels? Experts say no. They can’t explain how the squirrels got their blue tails, but they are certain that it’s not a natural phenomenon, although there are purple squirrels in India, Ratufa indica, commonly called a Malabar.
These are legit marooncolored squirrels, but they are vastly different from our brown, gray and red squirrels. For one, they’re about four times the size of our squirrels, and they create caches of food high up in trees.
So your blue squirrel isn’t the product of cross-breeding with a Malabar.
Blue paint and dyes are commonly used in construction areas to identify underground pipes that carry water. Red paint is used to denote power lines and orange for cable and other communication lines.
It’s possible a squirrel got in the way of one of these paint sprayers or got into bluetinted water. With the popularity of gender reveal parties, your squirrel also might have crashed a party where celebrants learned the baby would be a boy.
That doesn’t explain why we aren’t seeing pink squirrels, but there could be something about the blue dye that is more staining and lasting.
Unless a neighbor confesses to accidentally dying a squirrel’s tail blue, we’ll never know for sure how these decorative touches were added, but we can be pretty certain that we’re not looking at a new species of squirrel or a mutation.
DEAR JOAN >> I’ve seen anthills in the past — little volcanolooking things — but lately I’ve noticed two placed closely together, so they almost look like a pig snout.
I was on a walk one day and thought it might be a one-off, but I’ve noticed the little pig snout structures at other locations.
Seems weird that I’ve never seen these before this year. Is there a new ant architect in town?
DEAR SARAH >> Please tell me the ants aren’t blue.
I spoke with Steve Schutz, scientific programs manager with the Contra Costa Mosquito and Vector Control District. He says anthills can have multiple entrances, and though it’s odd to have two entrances so close together, it happens.
The hills likely belong to the same colony, as most ant species are territorial.