Wild Squirrel Question

[deraldamy]

I live in the middle of the city of Sacramento, but because there are a lot of trees in our neighborhood, there are a lot of wild squirrels. My daughter and I just saw, walking along our fence, a squirrel like we've never seen before, and we're afraid it has a disease. Walking along the fence, its profile looked just like a squirrel, and it was grey, as a lot of squirrels are. But my daughter, who saw it from a different room in the house, said it was blackish around the mouth and the front of the neck, and the paw she could see looked unusual. I could see that its tail, which was long like a squirrel's is, had very short hair, but the tip of it(maybe the last inch of it), had a tuft of longer hair. And I could see, from where I was, that something didn't look "right" about it. I kept wondering if it really was a squirrel, but I know of no other animal it could be.

Does anyone have any idea what this could be? Does it sound like it could have a disease? I searched the internet for a while before finding this site, and could find no photos of squirrels that looked like this one. I saw "ground squirrel" photos, and saw that they had short-hair tails, but the tails themselves were much shorter than on the one we saw. Also, none of the photos showed faces with blackish mouths and neck-fronts.

Can anyone help?

Amy

[gs1]

:Welcome are you any good at drawing? The tail could just be broken off - happens really easily with squirrels.

I'm sure others will have suggestions.

As far as i know crazysquirrels is our california contact:D

http://thesquirrelboard.com/forums/member.php?u=5305

[deraldamy]

The tail was really long...it's that the hair on it was short, except for the tuft of hair on the end. And the coloring was really strange.

Thanks for the reply.

[Kwewu7]

It's hard to respond to your question without actually seeing photos of the squirrel. Have you seen it since?

In the Sac area, we do see the occasional darker-furred individual, although not black-fronted as you described.

Could the squirrel have gotten dirty? Perhaps he was digging in fresh potting soil... my rehab squirrels just love getting their faces and chests into the dirt and coming up coated in it. They look like a totally different species until they've groomed themselves clean.

Hope it helps.

[deraldamy]

Well, our squirrel friend was on the lawn of our across-the-street neighbor for at least 15 minutes this morning! Does the long tail, with short hair, except for the tuft at the end, sound familiar? Maybe the face is just dirty -- definitely possible! I'll try to get a little closer, if there's a next time, to get a better look at his face.

Is there a way to set up my account so I'll get an email notification if there's a new comment on my post?

Thanks, everyone!