When Squirrels Were One of America’s Most Popular Pets

Atlas Obscura ^ | April 28, 2017 | Natalie Zarrelli

[SamAdams76]

IN 1722, A PET SQUIRREL named Mungo passed away. It was a tragedy: Mungo escaped its confines and met its fate at the teeth of a dog. Benjamin Franklin, friend of the owner, immortalized the squirrel with a tribute.

“Few squirrels were better accomplished, for he had a good education, had traveled far, and seen much of the world.” Franklin wrote, adding, “Thou art fallen by the fangs of wanton, cruel Ranger!”

Mourning a squirrel’s death wasn’t as uncommon as you might think when Franklin wrote Mungo’s eulogy; in the 18th- and 19th centuries, squirrels were fixtures in American homes, especially for children. While colonial Americans kept many types of wild animals as pets, squirrels “were the most popular,” according to Katherine Grier’s Pets in America, being relatively easy to keep.

By the 1700s, a golden era of squirrel ownership was in full swing. Squirrels were sold in markets and found in the homes of wealthy urban families, and portraits of well-to-do children holding a reserved, polite upper-class squirrel attached to a gold chain leash were proudly displayed (some of which are currently at the Metropolitan Museum of Art). Most pet squirrels were American Grey Squirrels, though Red Squirrels and Flying Squirrels also were around, enchanting the country with their devil-may-care attitudes and fluffy bodies.

By the 19th century, a canon of squirrel-care literature emerged for the enthusiast. In the 1851 book Domestic pets: their habits and management, Jane Loudon writes more about squirrels as pets than rabbits, and devotes an entire chapter to the “beautiful little creature, very agile and graceful in its movements.” Squirrels “may be taught to jump from one hand to the other to search for a hidden nut, and it soon knows its name, and the persons who feed it.” Loudin also waxes on their habits, like jumping around a room and peeping out from wooden eaves, writing that “an instance is recorded of no less than seventeen lumps of sugar being found in the cornice of a drawing-room in which a squirrel had been kept, besides innumerable nuts, pieces of biscuit.” Loudon’s advice: when your squirrel is not running around the room, provide it with a tin-lined cage that has a running wheel.

Leisure Hour Monthly, meanwhile, in 1859, advised to feed it “a fig or a date now and then,” and that you should start your squirrel-raising adventure with those procured “directly from the nest, when possible.” The unnamed author’s own pet squirrels, Dick and Peter, had the freedom of his bedroom and plenty of nuts to store away. “Let your pet squirrels crack their own nuts, my young squirrel fanciers,” the author wrote.

While many people captured their pet squirrels from the wild in the 1800s, squirrels were also sold in pet shops, a then-burgeoning industry that today constitutes a $70 billion business. One home manual from 1883, for example, explained that any squirrel could be bought from your local bird breeder. But not unlike some shops today, these pet stores could have dark side; Grier writes that shop owners “faced the possibility that they sold animals to customers who would neglect or abuse them, or that their trade in a particular species could endanger its future in the wild.”

Keeping pet squirrels has a downside for humans too, which eventually became clear: despite their owners’ best attempts at taming them, they’re still wild animals. As time wore on, squirrels were increasingly viewed as pests; by the 1910s squirrels became so despised in California that the state issued a widespread public attack on the once-adored creatures. From the 1920s through the 1970s many states slowly adopted wildlife conservation and exotic pet laws, which prohibited keeping squirrels at home. Today, experts and enthusiasts alike warn that squirrels don’t always make ideal pets, mainly because of their finicky diet, space requirements, and scratchy claws.

None of this, of course, will deter the most determined squirrel owner. Fans of Bob Ross might remember his pet squirrel named Peapod, and some squirrels owners are rekindling the obsession by making their pets Instagram-famous. Still, wild squirrels surely agree—it’s probably best we’re now mostly leaving them to the forest.

[BEJ]

Very funny picture!

[Revolutionary]

My parents had a pet squirrel. The first acclaimed art was of a boy and his squirrel. Black and white squirrels are actually gray squirrels.

[Equine1952]

My father in law fed them, then decided to quit. They trashed his bird feeder, then his patio cushions. We live trapped them and turned them loose on an as-hole that screwed him at work. I’ve killed a bunch but I’m old and quit. Piss me off? Here they come. It makes me smile.

[zeugma]

Yet more proof that squirrels are bent on domination of the world.

[Graybeard58]

They trashed his bird feeder, then his patio cushions.
................................................

Same here.

[NetAddicted]

Gotta show this to my son.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

#4. But they taste like chicken!

Actually, we had a semi-wild squirrel living in our maple tree for years and eventually he would come over, run up my arm, sit on my shoulder and eat a peanut I gave him.

Never got bitten.

They are smarter than a lot of people I know, esp. Democrats and have bigger balls.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

#17. Or shoot your eye out!

[RedMonqey]

(HaHa!!)

[JayAr36]

WOW!

[rlmorel]

Dagnabit!

The REAL point of my verbose post at #52 was to provide the appropriate link to THIS:

CLICK TO WATCH: Mark Rober Builds a Squirrel Obstacle Course to foil squirrels!

But...

...I shot myself in the foot monologuing and screwed up my link!

I hope you don't mind being pinged again, but with all the damned depressing crap going on, anything that can make us laugh is worthwhile IMO.

Anyway...if you have never seen Mark Rober's video on this and you find squirrels funny (or even if you dislike them and want to see them launched into the air) it is well worth watching! (You can probably tell just how hilarious I find this...his narration has me in stitches) It has the following elements:

The Contestants

The Goal

The Bridge of Instability

The Maze of A Thousand Corridors

The Pitchfork Tumblers of Treachery

The Home Wrecker (a female stuffed squrrel in a bikini-stop to gape and you won't escape!)

The Slinky Bridge of Deception

The Tourist Trap (This doesn't do anything but automatically take a picture when they poke their head through to get the walnut!)

The Quad Steps of Great Elevation

The Orbital Assist Platform (AKA "The Final Countdown", AKA "It's not a Catapult-it's a Squirrelapult!" He also puts a little 3D hologram thing the displays a walnut that isn't there, just to see if any of them will spend more than three seconds trying to grab it before they go into orbit.

Well, you can watch to see if any of them defeat it!

[A Formerly Proud Canadian]

Can he build something like that for left wing politicians? Especially something that can catapult them into space? Not that I would EVER want to polute space with left wing politicians.

[Pollard]

Unlike that guy, I don’t have too much spare time.

[rlmorel]

I think he does that for a living...he is making his living by making videos of these kinds.

He got fired (or was forced to quit) from NASA because they took exception to his glitter bomb videos which displayed too many minorities stealing the packages, IIRC.

I kind of admire someone who can make a living doing stuff like that...

[rlmorel]

I say we build something like this for the Leftists:

[McGruff]

I was just thinkin if squirrels are so smart why don't they figure out a safer way to cross the road. It's like kamikaze run for it.

[Bratch]

Thanks for the link-n-laugh!

[rlmorel]

You see, I have given that much thought.

I have always thought that, when God was creating, He obviously had to delegate certain things, because He had a lot to do.

GOD: “Okay, who the heck created ticks and mosquitoes on my behalf? I specifically said things that CLUCK, not things that SUCK.” (Angels in the host all turn in unison and point at Ruprecht.)

Could be that God gave one more chance to another Angel who had been excused from creation duty, because he had no aptitude for it, but...they convinced God to give him another chance.

This Angel did a GREAT job except for one thing. When he wrote the code to have a squirrel cross the road...he fouled that up badly. Everything else was great, falling from tall trees and surviving, finding food, persistence, rudimentary problem solving, but...crossing roads?

It wasn’t much back in the day when an Ox was coming at you, but...today with oncoming cars? Eh. Not so much.

[rlmorel]

We sure can use it these days, glad to help!

[glennaro]

Squirrels don’t seem like they would make a good pet

They don't make good "congress critters" either!