July 6, 2007
Remember my blogs at the end of last year, about black (melanistic) and white (albino and near albino) squirrels?
Those stories became some of the most popular (non-mystery photo) postings that have appeared here. See 2006’s Top Black and White Squirrel Locations, Yahoo’s Makes Us #1 With Salt & Pepper Squirrels, and Black and White Squirrels
Visit any of those sites for more photographs of white and black squirrels.
All of a sudden, now that it is summer, white squirrels are in the news again.
One city in the South is promoting its new discovery of a white squirrel (above) and its whole family of white squirrels. These albinos are getting a lot of media attention this week. Norcross, Georgia, has even set up a website discussing their “New Mascot.”
News reporter D. Aileen Dodd of the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution of July 5th, 2007, called Norcross’ white squirrel “about as elusive as Bigfoot.”
Well, actually, not quite. There are more photos of them, but that is the source of some of the discussion last year. Try an experiment. If you live in a town with these kinds of squirrels, see how easy it is to photograph them.
Meanwhile in Texas City, Texas, white squirrels have shown up there too, a couple weeks ago:
Peter Riger of the Houston Zoo said the white squirrels reported and photographed near Fourth Street and Eighth Avenue North in Texas City bear some relationship with the famous white tigers of Vegas’ fame….“These squirrels carry a gene that will produce more of the lighter colored ones than you’d normally see,” he said. “A bottlenecked population like this doesn’t move around much, so a recessive pigmentation can breed true. It’s typical of the way people have (deliberately) bred white tigers.”“Could white squirrels become a Texas City tourist draw?” by Rick Cousins, KHOU News, June 18, 2007.
No sightings of Portland, Maine’s lone white squirrel this year, as far as I have been able to discover.
Where are the new sightings – and photos – of the black squirrels for the spring and summer, up here in the Northern Hemisphere?
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.
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