The White Squirrels of Brevard, North Carolina

White Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis)

May 23, 2011. The City of Brevard, Transylvania County, North Carolina

Eight pairs of eyes scanned the grassy grounds of Brevard College looking for an unlikely white squirrel; school was out and we seemed to have the campus to ourselves.  We thought we’d been punked, when Nancy yelled ”WHITE SQUIRREL—left —11:00—on the ground!” Sure enough there he/she was—nosing around in the grass, doing exactly what any squirrel does.

Earlier, we had whipped through downtown Brevard, zipping under a banner declaring “The White Squirrel Festival,” headed for Headwater Outfitters and our rendezvous with four of their canoes. The French Broad River awaited; we had our lunches, drinks, sunscreen, insect repellent, hats.  It rained. Unprepared for four hours on the water in a cold drizzle, we postponed.

White squirrels here we come!  The canoe people suggested we drop in at The White Squirrel Shoppe in Brevard for all things having to do with the festival; so we did.  Eight of us invaded the shop, wandered around looking at Appalachian memorabilia, fingering things we didn’t appreciate, ignoring things we thought too cute, and enjoying the genuine hospitality of the shop proprietors.

“Are there really white squirrels?” and “Where can we see them?”

Answer: “Of course there are white squirrels! Here is a flyer that describes them and how they got here in Brevard!”  “The easiest place to see them is just down the street on the campus of Brevard College.”

Snowy white except for a small patch of gray on the head and sometimes a thread of gray on the backbone, they stood out starkly against the spring green of the lawn.  After seeing the first one, we spotted several more squirreling around, romping and stomping. 

On the way home, one of us read the flyer we got from the Shoppe.  The source of the white squirrels—a carnival owner found the squirrels on a mysterious island off Hawaii and they escaped while touring Brevard. Well no—No way.

They are indeed rare; in fact a rare population, but it is due to genetics not exotic introductions. They are not albinos since they have dark eyes and those protean gray patchs and streaks.  Their whiteness is due (probably) to a regulator gene “effecting the distribution of color, not color itself.” So here we have a population of Eastern Gray Squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis) who are white with a discrete touch of gray. It made our day.

For more info on the squirrels of Brevard: http://brevardnc.org/what-is-a-white-squirrel/

Thanks to Paul Secord for the white squirrel article. Photographs: J.P. Donahue