Considered pests by many, there are many ways to appreciate squirrels, including as “hen of the trees.”
January 21 is National Squirrel Appreciation Day, and it’s hard for many of us to find appreciation for the “tree rats” that steal and destroy bird feeders, chew on home and car wiring, and cause other havoc. But squirrel expert and naturalist Steve Sullivan, director of the University of Miami’s Hefner Museum of Natural History and former naturalist at the Peggy Notebaert Museum of Nature in Chicago, tells Steve Alexander there’s a lot to appreciate about the squirrel. And he says that one way to appreciate them is to hunt and eat them, because if left unchecked, the rapidly reproducing squirrels would overwhelm us.