Squirrels: the silent menace

By Wes Tibbs

It’s something that everybody sees, but nobody looks at, the possible powder keg that this campus is sitting on. Someone has got to do something about the squirrels.

“ Squirrels you say? Those cute little guys are harmless. In fact I love watching them frolic in the afternoon sun,” say you. But wait? As the saying goes, “what is a squirrel but a rat with a poofy tail?”

According to the University of Nebraska’s Department of Natural Resources Web site, “A survey of the National Pest Control Association voted the tree squirrel as the number one nuisance animal in the United States.” Apparently, tree squirrels cause problems from chewing up landscaping to chewing up electrical wiring.

These little pests are knows to gnaw their way into attics and other parts of buildings and set up camp. One factor listed on Nebraska U’s Web site says tree squirrels are attracted and encouraged by—naturally—trees.

With so many trees on campus, Fresno State is a natural squirrel asylum. It’s only a matter of time before the furry little demons make their way into the facilities and cause damage—if they aren’t there already.

All of this is, of course superficial, but where the squirrel menace reaches its most dangerous point is the diseases they can carry. Bubonic plague—the disease that killed millions of medieval Europeans—can be carried by fleas that find a home on these little furbags.

Granted, the medieval Europeans lived in close quarters, and squalid conditions in their cities encouraged the rampant spread of disease, but I’ve been in the dorms, these conditions exist still today.

It may just be a matter of time until the plague takes advantage of these conditions and wipes out Aspen Hall—just because a dirty little squirrel scampered close enough to a dorm resident for few of it’s infected fleas to make the transition from fleabag to freshman.

In general, tree squirrels can produce a litter of five young twice a year. This means two squirrels can produce 10 others in one year, and in turn, each of those will produce 4.5 squirrels the next year, and so on.

It isn’t long until the squirrel population is exploded, creating a situation of overcrowding—increasing the possibility of disease to spread through the population, and forcing squirrels to seek new nesting sites as all the good spots in the trees are taken.

So next time you take a moment to watch those cute little squirrels bouncing across the lawn, tails waving, just remember that these diseased, overbreeding varmints are not so innocent as they look.

— This columnist can be reached at collegian@csufresno.edu