This is the mysterious creature I've been seeing in our backyard. See? I'm not crazy. Now that I've had a better look at it, it just kind of looks like a giant squirrel with funny coloring. I guess I'll have to look up different squirrel species. It stands about a foot tall. The picture below kind of gives you a better idea of how big it is. And it does run and stand like a squirrel. So, I guess I'm going with giant squirrel. What do you think?
7 comments:
Kinda looks like a cross between a gerbil and a squirrel to me! :) The face looks like a gerbil.
Jordan says maybe its a meerkat?
It kinda looks like that but Meerkats have a long skinny tail.
It looks like a squirrel, but its hands and feet look weird...kinda like a raccoon's....maybe it is an inbred mutant
We found out what it is! It is a Big Cypress Fox Squirrel, a threatened species. I'm calling someone today at Florida Fish and Wildlife to see if we're supposed to report sightings of them.
If your Florida squirrel watching has been limited to the ubiquitous gray squirrel, you’ll be surprised by the large size and color variations of another Florida native, the fox squirrel. Fox squirrels are much less common then gray squirrels, which makes a sighting a special occasion. They also have a heftier body, a longer tail and fur that ranges in color from tawny to gray to dark brown to completely black. A white nose and ears give the fox squirrel’s face a mask-like appearance.
Fox squirrels spend more time on the ground than gray squirrels and are slower moving. They forage for acorns, nuts, fruits, insects, mushrooms, buds and tubers, so they require habitats with an open understory. These include open pine flatwoods, sandhills, mixed pine-hardwood areas and rangeland interspersed with trees. Like the gray squirrel, fox squirrels prefer to nest in hollows in trees, but will also construct bulky nests of twigs and leaves in treetops. Young are usually born in late winter/early spring and in the summer.
Fox squirrels are most common in the Panhandle and northern Florida, but they are protected from hunting throughout the state. Of the three subspecies found in Florida, two are listed as protected species. One of these, the Big Cypress fox squirrel, occurs only in an area south of the Caloosahatchee River in southwest Florida. The other, Sherman’s fox squirrel, is found from southeastern Florida to Georgia and west to about the Choctawhatchee River. Fox squirrels in the western panhandle belong to a less vulnerable, more widespread subspecies.
[Taken from www.floridaconservation.org. There's a picture on there and that's definately what you've seen. Yours may be even bigger, but by looking at the picture yours appears to be a male].
Kendra:)
I hate the crab grass in FL.
I hate pretty much ALL grass in Florida.
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