Glendale Squirrel

Thursday
This afternoon, before heading to the "Y" to swim, I drove over to Glendale to see another of the Art for All installations and cross it off my list. However, it wasn't a particularly impressive one or in a particularly scenic spot, so instead I decided to bring you one of the Glendale squirrels. In the 1940s Thomas Carruthers III, a Glendale businessman, brought two pairs of black squirrels to the village from the resort town of Harbor Springs, Michigan. Within two weeks someone had shot one of the squirrels and its hide was prominently displayed on the wall of a local tavern. That left three black squirrels remaining, but they managed to populate Glendale's tree-rich environment, and now Glendale is one of the few places that can claim quite a large population of these creatures. Over the years, Glendale has become well known for the black squirrels and so they celebrated the village's 150th birthday with hand painted, four-foot tall, fiberglass squirrels. I blipped another one several years ago here.