February 10, 2012
Yep, what a week. This has been an intensive few days of an Icelandic “River monster” on tape, an old Ohio trailcam Bigfoot, “Woolly Mammoth” footage, and a “Black Leopard” tape, so why not a purple squirrel? Difference is, the people that saw this strangely colored critter actually caught it.
A couple in central Pennsylvania found a very unusual critter in their backyard — a purple squirrel.
Percy Emert said he and his wife, Connie, have cage-like traps in their yard to keep squirrels away from the bird feeders. Percy Emery then releases the squirrels into the woods away from his home but joked that sometimes they make it back to his house before he does.
“I came home (one day recently) and my wife said, ‘You’re not going to believe it but I saw a purple squirrel in the yard,'” he said Thursday. “So I put out a trap with a couple of peanuts inside.”
Before too long, the squirrel came back and found itself in the trap Sunday.
What they found in the trap was a purple squirrel. After keeping the squirrel around for a few days so neighbors could take a look at the strange creature, Percy Elmert released the squirrel back into the wild Tuesday night.
Purple squirrels are rare animals, indeed, but they now have their own Facebook page. And they have been reported before. A purple squirrel was sighted in Minnesota in 1997, and photographed (above) by Maren Nelsen Beckman. In 2008, a purple squirrel (below) appeared near the Meoncross School in Stubbington, Hampshire, UK.
Of course, in the past, at Cryptomundo, we have spent some time on albino and melanistic, even black and white, squirrels (see here and here). It only seems fair to note purple ones this week.
Thanks for the heads up (that’s a purple heads up, of course) about this Jersey Shore 2012 purple squirrel, sent to Cryptomundo, from Susan Cherico and Philip A Compher.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Filed under Breaking News, CryptoZoo News, Weird Animal News