Feeling Squirrelly

Love 'em or hate 'em, we have lots of squirrels. A lot of press has been given to the takeover of the Eastern Gray Squirrel in Great Britain and Italy, and the subsequent displacement of the native red squirrel. For some reason, it isn't as well known that we've had the same problem here in the Pacific Northwest. Our native American Red Squirrel has been driven out by the more adaptable gray squirrel, and I guess we've just thrown up our hands and decided not to do anything about it, because I haven't heard of any plans to try to fight it. Truthfully, I doubt we could do anything about it anyway. Also, we've also been getting a large influx of black squirrels making their way down from British Columbia. It used to be I'd only see them up in Vancouver, B.C., and then we started seeing them in Blaine, WA (which is right on the Canada-U.S. border) about five years ago, and for the last two years or so they've been popping up all over Bellingham. Apparently, they are just gray squirrels in which the white and black genes have separated in certain communities. I have seen black squirrels with gray tails or gray spots, which is pretty funny looking. According to Wikipedia, there are also white squirrels for the same reason. Has anyone seen white squirrels?

Ironically, I snapped this in front of our neighbor's bamboo, which has also proven to be incredibly invasive...