FRESNO STATE SQUIRRELS

From zooming up trees to relaxing and eating a snack, the campus squirrels seem to catch everyone’s eye. Student Lilit Artoutiounian said, “I think they are super funny cause they like to interact with people a lot.”

But did you know the squirrels aren’t even from the Central Valley?

According to Lecturer Julie Constable,”They may have been introduced by somebody who were missing their squirrels from the east coast.” Over two-thousand miles away from home, these squirrels are adapting and growing. Constable said, “They’re non-native squirrels to this area, and they flourished. They do quite well.”

Adjusting is exactly what these squirrels did on the Fresno State campus. The most popular thing to do is to feed them snacks. But is feeding them doing more harm than good?

Student Emily Vardanyan said, “I think it’s cool, sometimes I feed them myself and they really like it. But I really just like that people try to like feed them nuts and stuff and not like junk food.”)

But don’t worry, the creatures have plenty of food on campus. Constable said “They are finding a lot of seeds from a lot of the different trees we have. You know this campus is designed as an arboretum, so we have many many species of trees that many of them provide fruit and nuts that the squirrels can eat.” And this food is actually good for them.

If you’d like to interact online with the squirrels, here is a link to their Twitter account.