Pasttimes by Terry Jones
Forty years ago, David Freeman was hunting outside Quitman, La., when he witnessed one of nature’s oddest spectacles – a squirrel migration. As he described it, a “kagillion squirrels” came through the woods, and it took a good 15 minutes for them all to pass by.
“It was loud,” Freeman recalled. “It was kind of like a bunch of black birds in the wintertime. I don’t have any idea why they moved but I’ll never forget it.”
Rev. Lavelle Spillers heard of another migration that occurred in the late 1940’s around Sterlington. “Back in the late 70’s an old timer that I deer hunted with told me of a time when he saw a squirrel migration across the Ouachita River. He said there were thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of squirrels that swam across the Ouachita. The migration lasted for several days if I remember right. He said they were so thick that he believed a man could have walked across the river on them.”
Squirrel migrations are a little understood phenomenon, but they occurred fairly regularly in the old days when the number of squirrels was simply staggering.
Naturalist John James Audubon and a companion witnessed one while floating down the Ohio River in 1819. “About one hundred miles below Cincinnati . . . we observed large number of squirrels swimming across the river, and we continued to see them at various places. . . .”
“At times they were strewed, as it were, over the surface of the water, and some of them being fatigued, sought a few moments’ rest on our long ‘steering oar,’ which hung into the water. . . . The boys, along the shores and in boats, were killing the squirrels with clubs in great numbers. . . .”
In the fall of 1852, people in Wisconsin watched an estimated half a billion squirrels scamper across an area roughly 150 miles long by 130 miles wide. The migration lasted a month, and squirrels were even reported running through the open prairies miles from the nearest trees.Another large migration occurred in September 1881 near Reelfoot Lake, Tennessee. A newspaper reported, “Squirrels are crossing the Mississippi River . . . in fabulous numbers. They are caught by the dozens by men in skiffs. They enter and pass through cornfields, destroying everything as they go….”
Four years later, one of the largest known squirrel migrations took place when a mass of rodents left northeastern Mississippi and headed to Arkansas.
One of several newspapers that reported on the event declared, “They are crossing the Mississippi from innumerable points along a line [25 miles long]. They are travelling in [the] thousands and the people who live along their line of march are killing them with sticks in countless numbers. Enterprising men are following them in wagons, slaughtering as they go, and shipping the carcasses to the nearest market. They seem to have lost all fear of man, and in some instances have attacked hunters.”
The most famous squirrel migration in modern times took place in the eastern U.S. in September 1968. Hundreds of dead squirrels were found on highways, and people reported finding large numbers of drowned squirrels in New York’s Hudson River and in the TVA lakes around the Smoky Mountains. In a week’s time, 117 carcasses were fished out of the Cheoah Dam raceway. A biologist who investigated the event estimated the number of dead squirrels found on the highways to be a thousand times the norm.
No one knows exactly why squirrels move in such massive numbers. The migrations almost always occur in September, and only gray squirrels seem to be involved.
Some biologists have speculated that unknown psychological factors or an unusual flea infestation may cause the migrations, but the most logical explanation is that the squirrels are reacting to overcrowded conditions.
Squirrel migrations often follow a couple of exceptionally successful breeding seasons, so squirrels may instinctively know that the existing food supply will not support their numbers and they respond by leaving the region.
Surprisingly, squirrel numbers don’t increase in those areas where they migrate to because apparently few survive the journey. The published accounts of squirrel migrations frequently mention that most of the tree rats drown, die of exhaustion, or are killed by people and predators along the way.
Similarly, the areas vacated do not suffer any long-term decline in squirrel numbers. When conditions are favorable, squirrels can have two litters per year, and the population quickly rebounds.
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