This time of year, when the trees are bare, you can begin to get an idea of how many squirrels live in your neighborhood. Look for a big ball of leaves wedged into a notch between branches. The leaves are the exterior of a squirrel’s nest, and each nest is home to one adult squirrel. In a few weeks the first young of this year will be born, so some of the nests will be home to a mother and her babies.
The first point is that the leaves we see on the outside of the nest are not the structural supports that hold the thing together. Like Chicago’s other famous Sullivan, Louis, squirrels use an internal skeleton to support their structures. Louis made his of steel. Squirrels use sticks and twigs and, of course, the living branches of the trees where their nests are located.
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On this framework they weave a lining incorporating grasses, strips of bark, and shredded leaves. The best way to shred a leaf if you want to weave it into a structure is to skeletonize it. This means removing most of the blade of the leaf, leaving the sturdy central vein with just a bit of blade on each side of it.
The squirrel enters the nest through a hole in the side, and the hole is likely to be on the lee side to keep the wind and rain from coming in the door. Inside there is more or less one squirrel’s worth of room. The animal curls up into a ball with its tail covering its face to maximize its insulation.
Fox squirrels are a bit bigger, and their underparts are reddish. I know of two populations of fox squirrels in the city. One is in Lincoln Park at the bird sanctuary behind the totem pole at Addison Street. The other is in Horner Park along the river between Irving Park and Montrose. There may well be others. In fact, if you know of any others, drop a line to the Reader. Maybe we can get a population survey going.
If you are in Lincoln Park or along the lake anywhere between Lincoln Park and Zion, you might keep an eye out for black squirrels. My only sighting in Chicago of one of these animals was on Stratford Place in the block between the Outer Drive and Broadway.
