So how many squirrels are there in Central Park? The Squirrel Census team presented their reveal at the storied Explorers Club on the Upper East Side-a home base for adventurers, wooly mammoth tusks, and a cheetah rumored to have been shot by Teddy Roosevelt. In being common, they survive and multiply. They remain indifferent to us unless we bear a whiff of shareable food. We often pass squirrels by with nary a shrug. Most of the time, they go unnoticed, unless they gnaw through your kid’s stroller basket to steal rice cakes (happened to me), or dig up someone’s vegetables, or-worse-bite a finger that it mistakes for a tasty nut offering. They scamper through community gardens and private backyards. “On the flip side, the volunteers became an exhibit, like a living art project,” he explains, so that curious passersby stopped to watch the counters watching squirrels.Ĭentral Park, and most other city parks with green space and trees, harbor squirrels. Like the three-hundred-twenty-three volunteer squirrel scouts and sighters who counted Sciurus carolinensis twice per day, over the course of eleven days, I make it my mission to follow in their tracks.Īllen says that the Squirrel Census “forced squirrel sighters to interact with the space in new ways”-by observing activities like a game of soccer and considering how different it looks from a squirrel’s point of view. They released their findings on NYC OpenData portal this past month. The sections were mapped and drawn over fifteen months by cartographer Nat Slaughter, who, together with writer Jamie Allen, conceived and organized the Central Park Squirrel Census, a citizen science and storytelling project that took place in October 2018. Of the eight-hundred-forty acres that make up Central Park, I choose to squirrel count in a two-acre area described by 66th through 68th Streets on the east side, and by a statue of Balto on the west. I see their tails talking, but I find it hard to hear their chirupping sounds, like the kuk kuk kuk! (alarm), quaa (danger retreating), and muk-muk (affection or hunger) noises they are known for. I see grey squirrels, mostly, some flecked with brown, splashed with cinnamon, streaked with black. In a span of twenty minutes, I count twelve of them. The Eastern Grey Squirrel: nearly a foot long, with half its length its bushy tail, which acts as an umbrella, blanket, fan, counterbalance, and message maker. Squirrel leaping and landing in semi-circular arcs of air, so that it seems the ground is made of trampoline. Squirrel digging holes in dirt, pillowing leaves, sculpting a storehouse for its winter food. Squirrel’s cherubic eyes, delicate paws rotating an acorn in and out of its mouth with precision, neurotic glances for predators (think of the adjective “squirrely”), stands alert, white belly bared, head telescoping. Another squirrel pauses, its tail question-marking, then twitches, signaling fear. It drops to the ground, hesitates, nabs its nut, climbs an oak tree. This is Sidewalk Naturalist, a column by Lenora Todaro which sees New York City through its wildlife citizens, whose lives tell us something about the way we live in a fragile ecosystem that is the city today.Īn acorn whizzes by my ear.
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