The White Squirrels of Rockingham

By John Myers, Internet Photojournalist

A white squirrel I named "Caspar," holding something he found to munch on in my back yard.

If you're driving on Roberdel Road in the northern outskirts of Rockingham, NC don't be surprised if you see a white squirrel -- or even two or three or four at once.
They aren't ghosts, there's just grey squirrels wearing spiffy snow-white suits.
These rare critters are wild, but have found generous benefactors at homes on both sides of Roberdel Road, where residents report frequent sightings at well-stocked bird feeders.
It's hard to say how many white squirrels live in an area about one-mile long by several blocks wide on both sides of Roberdel Road between U.S. 1 and Five Points intersection.
Reports indicate there are least three groups or families of white squirrels in the area.
One group hangs out on Morningside Drive on the east side of Roberdel Road and its members have also been seen on nearby Woodland, Pinedale and Brookbank roads.
Another group is reported on Park Avenue, on the other side of Roberdel Road, about half a mile from the Morningside Drive, Woodland-Pinedale-Brookbank area.
And what may be a third group has been seen on Deweese Avenue near its intersection with U.S. 1, Fayetteville Road, about half a mile from its Park Avenue intersection.

Where Rockingham's white squirrels started

The Park Avenue colony may be the oldest in the area. Tarance Hunsucker, who lives at 1905 Park Ave., said he saw the first white squirrel there about five or six years ago in a field next to Park Avenue Presbyterian Church, across the street from his house.

"Caspar" in the back yard of my home at 2020 Pinedale Road, Rockingham, NC, with one of his grey buddies at right.

"I told my wife, 'Betty, there's a white squirrel out here,' and she didn't believe me," he said. Betty Hunsucker said, "I told him, 'You didn't see any white squirrel.' But a few days later, I saw him for myself. We were just amazed."
That same squirrel, who is really cream-colored, is still often seen in the field across from the Hunsucker home. Another pair of white squirrels have since started showing up in the Hunsucker's yard, where they provide them with a diet of pecans and sunflower seeds.
"The first day I fed him pecans, he toted off pecans to bury until dark," Hunsucker said.
The two white squirrels in the Hunsucker's yard are apparently of two generations, one about three or four years old and another younger one. They also have at least one part-white, part-grey squirrel, and at one time had a solid-red squirrel who visited regularly.
And Hunsucker said he's seen evidence of more white squirrels born on Park Avenue.
A neighbor's cat was caught with two white squirrel babies which it had killed. Hunsucker said the elderly neighbors who own the cat called him to come and bury the white babies.
"We try to take care of the white squirrels in our neighborhood," Hunsucker said.

The White Squirrel feeding tour

A white squirrel defies gravity on a tree in the backyard of my home.

Caspar the white squirrel defies gravity on a tree in the backyard of my home.

A.C. Godwin, who lives at 1000 Morningside Drive, said he and his wife Frances have seen as many as three or four white squirrels at once. They first started seeing them about four or five years ago.
A neighbor, J.C. Lamm at 916 Morningside Drive, estimates he has been seeing the white squirrels in the neighborhood for at least three or four years.
Fran and Dave West at 1004 Morningside Drive, have also seen as many as three or four white squirrels at a time in their back yard, which has several bird feeders and a creek.
The Godwins' home appears to be the first stop on the daily tour of the Morningside clan of white squirrels. A.C. and Frances Godwin report seeing white squirrels at their bird feeder -- well stocked with sunflower seeds -- every morning at daybreak and again every afternoon about 3 p.m., apparently the same group making their regular daily rounds.
Frances Godwin said, "We just saw one for a good while, but I've seen three or four at once over the past two years or so, and some of them are babies. One came up to the windowsill in the kitchen one day and put his little nose right up to the glass like he wanted to talk to us. My mother and I were right up there looking at him, eyeball to eyeball."
And a Park Avenue white squirrel may have been relocated into a Hamlet neighborhood.
John Patrick of Patrick's Tree Service in Hamlet was cutting down a tree in the Park Avenue area about four years ago when he discovered some squirrel babies in a nest.
"There were two white ones and a grey one, and I saved them and took them home to try to raise them. I saw the mother and she was white, so she must have bred with a grey.
"One of the white ones died, but I raised a white one and a grey one. I kept them a couple of years and finally turned them loose at my home in the Highland Pines neighborhood.
"I saw the grey one for about a year and a half after that, but I never saw the white one again. I don't know if something got it, or maybe it just moved out of the neighborhood."

Other White Squirrel colonies

Terry Sharpe, agriculture liaison biologist with the N.C. Wildlife Commission, works out of the Sandhills Game Depot near Hoffman. He said white squirrels are the same species as grey squirrels, and with their dark eyes these are not albinos, which have pink eyes.
Sharpe said it is likely there are at least three groups of white squirrels in the Roberdel Road area, based on reports. "Squirrels will have about a quarter-mile of range, depending on food resources, and it sounds like they are finding plenty of food to eat in that area."
He said the only way to determine the white squirrel population would be for area residents to keep journals with times when they are sighted, and then compare notes. "Squirrels are pretty tough to count," Sharpe said.

Kenton, Tenn, boasts one of the other white squirrel colonies in the U.S., perhaps the oldest.

One characteristic all the white squirrels of Roberdel Road apparently share is dark eyes. Other known colonies of white squirrels across the nation have pink eyes and are albinos.
One of the larger colonies of dark-eyed white squirrels is in the area of Brevard in the western North Carolina mountains. White squirrels have also been reported in Charlotte and Yonges Island, S.C., according to Brevard College's White Squirrel Research Institute.
Another dark-eyed white squirrel colony has been in Exeter, Ontario in Canada since at least 1912 and several colonies have been in north and central Florida in the Orlando and Jacksonville areas since early in the 1900s. The Brevard white squirrels are believed to have been started with a pair brought from Florida in 1949, according to the institute.
White squirrel photographed by Shirley Werner in her backyard in Cicinnati, Ohio

White squirrel photographed by Shirley Werner in her backyard in Cicinnati, Ohio

Albino white squirrel colonies are reported in Kenton, Tenn., known to be there since 1869; in Olney, Ill., since 1902; and in Marionville, Mo., since shortly after the Civil War ended, according to the White Squirrel Research Institute.
For more information see the White Squirrel Research Institute website.

P.S. Received a white squirrel photo from Shirley Werner of Cincinnati, Ohio, who shot this little critter in her backyard. She notes it has dark eyes, like our Rockingham, NC, squirrels, not the pink eyes of the albino variety of white squirrels. Thanks for the photo, Shirley.