Half a Mammal

As I think back on it, it’s possible that well more than half of my “life mammals” first crossed my path in Fontenelle Forest. The tally this past Easter weekend, though, was less than impressive: White-tailed Deer, Muskrat, Fox Squirrel, all of them common, all of them so familiar as to be almost unavoidable.

One species I was especially eager to see–my friends from the east may snort in disbelief–was Eastern Gray Squirrel. Hugely abundant in the heart of its native range (and disturbingly common here in Vancouver, where it is an introduced pest species), this mammal is uncommon to scarce as far north as Peru, in southeast Nebraska, and very rare indeed as far up the Missouri River as Bellevue. Over three and a half decades of hiking and looking, I can still count on both hands my encounters with the creature in Sarpy County.

Friday last I was wandering the Missouri’s flood plain on a dim, dull morning, when suddenly I spied with my own little eye a grizzled tail hanging down from a tree.

A second look confirmed that the guard hairs edging the appendage were white, not black as in Fox Squirrel: it was indeed the tail of an Eastern Gray Squirrel. But not much more than that, alas.

I don’t know who stashed this bit of squirrel in the tree. I’d seen a couple of Red-tailed Hawks and a Cooper’s Hawk that morning. My money’s on the Barred Owls, though, still singing loud in the dim, dull light, as they’re wont to do in early spring. And what’s better than a sciurid snack at breakfast?

I couldn’t fault the raptors’ taste; rarity must have its culinary benefits, too. But still I wished I’d arrived while the squirrel was still scampering and the owls were still hungry.