Category: Toronto

It’s funny how you can get used to something as unorthodox as a pure white squirrel.

I had heard of this beast in whispered conversation, but had never seen it until about a year ago. I stopped in my tracks. What. The. Hell…?

Then, last week, I decided to take advantage of the warmer-than-usual weather in Toronto and went to my favourite park to sit and read a book (and eat a croissant). In my peripheral vision, I saw something furry and white moving around the autumn leaves. It was the squirrel. It was foraging just a few feet away from my park bench.

I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

I started thinking: how does a pure white (not Albino, I’m told) squirrel survive? Surely it’s a fatal genetic inheritance which dogs and hawks have naturally preyed upon.

And yet, the white squirrel continued foraging. In fact, it took interest in my croissant and at one point crept below my feet looking for crumbs. I didn’t move: it’s the choice you make when you see something like this. You don’t want to spoil the moment reaching for your cellphone camera.

I posted the photos on my Facebook profile and suddenly people started commenting or sending me messages, some amazed, some shocked. Was this a joke? A missing evolutionary link? Am I that good with Photoshop?

There’s not much I can say. It’s a white squirrel. It lives by its own rules. All I know is that when I went back to the same spot the next day, expecting it to have moved in nomadic squirrel fashion to another part of the park, it was still there.

I wanted to ask it whether it knew what happened to the unicorns or the manticores. It was busy foraging however, so I left it to live its fascinatingly precarious life.