Critter City

(By Len Spoden For The Washington Post)

No less an authority than Richard Thorington Jr., curator of mammals for the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History and co-author of "Squirrels: The Animal Answer Guide," published in 2006, says he wasn't familiar with some of the accounts of local gray squirrel releases. But, he says, he's not surprised.

The introduction of squirrels into new areas was not unusual in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he says. The eastern gray squirrel was introduced in the United Kingdom in the 1880s and South Africa in 1900, he and co-author Katie Ferrell note in their book.

They also detail the release of 18 black squirrels from Canada at the National Zoo in the early 1900s. The black squirrels seen throughout much of the area today are descendants of those squirrels. It is likely, Thorington says, that many of the gray squirrels that flourish in Lafayette Square, on the Mall and in other areas likewise descend from the early gray squirrel releases.

The local public's fascination with Sciurus carolinensis is better understood in the context of the urban park movement of the mid-1800s. As cities grew and became more densely populated, the notion emerged that "what was needed from parks was an antidote to the city itself," says Anne Whiston Spirn, professor of landscape architecture and planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of "The Granite Garden: Urban Nature and Human Design." "In the late 19th century, there was a growing sense that the public needed urban parks to walk through and enjoy 'rural scenery.' "

Frederick Law Olmsted Sr., father of American landscape architecture, believed people derived a mental benefit from exposure to nature. Animals were sometimes introduced into urban parks to enhance the experience. Herds of sheep trimmed the grass and provided a pleasant spectacle in some parks, most notably New York's Central Park, which had a herd until 1934. Squirrels, though relatively useless as grass mowers, played a similar aesthetic purpose in the District.

Olmsted, who was one of Central Park's two designers, also served as the U.S. Capitol's first landscape architect. He "gave Washington one of the best examples of his work as a landscape architect when the Capitol grounds were enlarged under his direction," began the 1904 Post piece calling for squirrels in more D.C. parks.

"It is not the least of the charms of those grounds as they are to-day to see the familiar gray squirrels quietly feeding there, or bounding over lawns, or scampering up and through the trees." The piece goes on to say that "people passing through the Capitol grounds, whatever their hurry may be, . . . will stop for a moment and linger over the little gray figures, with all their associations of childhood in the woods."

Protecting the 'Gray Denizen'

As the squirrel population grew in Washington, so did the litany of concerns residents had for their welfare. People complained that stray cats were terrorizing and killing squirrels at an alarming rate, prompting government officials to consider forming a police "cat patrol" in 1912 to squelch the "untimely assassination of the little gray denizens of the city by murderous cat outlaws," The Post reported. People wrote to park officials complaining of dog owners who let their pets chase squirrels and of basins that were too filthy to provide adequate drinking water for them.

The squirrels' food supply was a recurrent public anxiety. In 1929, Ulysses S. Grant III, director of the federal office overseeing the District's public parks (and grandson of the president and Civil War general), wrote to one resident expressing concerns that every year, "approximately 2,000 quarts of raw peanuts are purchased and distributed by employees of this division and the Park Police." Officials also set up a designated feeding ground in Lafayette Square, where wildlife-loving visitors could give food to the squirrels and birds to their heart's content.

The rise of car traffic brought another concern for squirrels: getting squashed. "This is a plea for Washington's squirrels," began one letter to Grant in 1929, which went on to suggest the creation of an overhead system to allow squirrels to cross busy streets. In addition to making the city safer for them, "this improvised means would afford also something more than a symbol for Washington's solicitude for the friendly, beautiful life of its native children," the letter concluded.

A Nut-Fueled Nuisance

That was pretty representative of the tenor of much of the public squirrel record at the time. But there were rustlings of discontent. A homeowner on Woodland Drive NW near the Naval Observatory complained to park officials in 1926 that squirrels were destroying his bulbs and plants. He didn't want to kill them, but they were multiplying rapidly and had become quite active in trying to get into the house.

In 1955, squirrels started bothering the resident of a more prominent home. White House squirrels were scratching up President Dwight Eisenhower's private putting green on the lawn just outside his office. Messing with America's First Golfer is not a good idea. The White House squirrel patrol was put on high alert and launched "Operation Squirrel Seduction" (later renamed "Operation Exodus"), which culminated in the trapping and relocation of three resident squirrels.