Quote:
Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk
Some consider them pests. Some eat them. The gray squirrel can be very destructive. Chew everything including wires under the hood of a car. I like them and give them their own spot to eat and do squirrel things. I have the trail cam facing their feeder. They can get crazy playing.
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Yes, but its all different species.
We have two invasive grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) populations in Europe, one in Britian and where the grey by many people are considered a pest, these carry the feared squirrel pox virus to which the American squirrels are immune but it is absolutely lethal for our European squirrels, and one in Northern Italy, spreading. these are said to not carry that virus. However. The grey ones are bigger, stronger, more aggressive, they are social, and thus probably more intelligent. Practically everywhere where the red and grey populatioisn meet, it results in the vanishing of the red ones, there is no l,asting coexistence. In Britain, the Reds have almost vanished except in some small protected reserves in the North.
These are some of the reasons why over here, our native red ones are usually not seen as a pest by people, and as I said: they even are protected by law, you get legal troubles if you kill or catch them, the penalties can reach to I think up to 50,000 or even 100,000 coins. We have many squirrel rescue stations across all Germany, that nurse younglings and baby squirrels that lost their mothers for whatever a reason. I can understand that in North America it is different with the many species there, I have seen videos and films on their behaviour, they are MUCH different to ours, practically all of them seem to be stronger and more aggressive, many are bigger.
Yours are stronger. Ours are cuter, and they have pointy hair tufts at the top of the ears in winter. No other squirrel has these.
The only other squirrel families we have over here, are marmots in the Alpes, and spemophilus (=Ziesel), both are ground squirrels. We have neither prairie dogs nor other tree squirrels, only our small tiny cute red ones.
And if you have not guessed it already, I love them!
Eichhörnchern bringen Freude in das Leben.