Looking back: Squirrels as pets | Local News | rutlandherald.com – Rutland Herald

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Rain likely. Low 38F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch..
Rain likely. Low 38F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a half an inch.
Updated: November 27, 2022 @ 7:32 pm

There was a time when cats were kept for use as mousers and dogs for hunting, and wild animals often were domesticated as pets. Of all the wild creatures tamed by Vermonters, squirrels were, by far, the most popular.
Katherine Grier’s “Pets in America” (2006) notes, “squirrel nests were raided systematically for their babies and young ones sold as pets. They were pretty and lively and, if caught young enough grew quite tame.” Because they could easily chew through wood they required cages made by tinsmiths. Soon, the exercise wheel became a standard fixture for this family pet.
While today it is illegal to keep a wild animal in captivity, it was a common practice in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The custom was not, however, without its perils. The Bellows Falls Times (February 1868) noted the hazards of such a practice: “Mrs. Frederick Seward is at present suffering from the bite of a pet squirrel who was in the habit of amusing himself on the shoulders of his particular friends. In one of his playful moods he ran up Mrs. Seward’s neck and amused himself behind her ear until, becoming entangled in her hair he endeavored with considerable violence to extricate himself. The fair lady, with the best intentions of assisting the disentanglement, put up her hand, which was promptly bitten by the bewildered little animal. He has been transferred to a friend who affirms that henceforth he shall be kept in a cage.”
Jane Loudon’s 1851 treatise “Domestic Pets” suggests that a squirrel, captured as a baby, may be easily tamed and “may be suffered to roam around the house without trying to escape. It will run up a window curtain and along the cornice at the top with wonderful grace and agility.”
Loudon offers instruction for teaching the pet squirrel to jump from hand to hand, and also what to feed it and how to maintain it.
“When squirrels are tolerably tame, they are frequently kept in little ornamental kennels, with a platform for the squirrel to sit on, and a little chain to fasten to a collar round the squirrel’s neck,” she writes.
She notes that their cage must be kept exceedingly clean, for if they take ill, “they will surely die.”
In September 1881, The Watchman, a Montpelier newspaper, reported this sad fate of a pet squirrel.
“Reading that the president wanted squirrel broth, but could not get a squirrel from which to make it, two little girls sent him a pet squirrel by express. The animal arrived in good shape, apparently unconscious of the honorable fate in store for it,” it reads. “It is safe to assume that the girls, in sorrow over the assassination of President Garfield, were sacrificing their pet to help the dying Chief of State.”
As now, children were very attached to their pets. In 1889, the Argus reported this tribute to a late and lamented rodent friend.
“Freddie Goldsbury is quite ill with scrofulous sore leg and just before Christmas met with a severe loss in the death of a pet gray squirrel that he had owned for nine years. New Year’s morning, Mrs. David Boles presented him with an elegant oil painting of his pet, her own handiwork, and there was no happier boy in Barre,” it reads.
It was not uncommon to feed squirrels and, after a fashion, tame them while leaving them to run free in the surroundings of one’s house or farm. One problem with this practice was that the animals often fell prey to hunters or vandals.
In 1900, it was reported that the squirrels who lived on Pearl Street in Burlington had been lured into the home of a resident. “She began by placing a nut in the yard, which the little animal promptly captured.” As she moved the nuts closer to her chair she eventually persuaded them to eat them in her lap. A few years later, the newspapers reported that “some of the squirrels have been killed by wanton boys.”
Flying squirrels have also been popular pets. In 1920, the Rutland News reported that an official of a “big theatrical producing syndicate” was wanting to purchase flying squirrels for the estate of “a millionaire actress in a New York suburb. Consequently, it behooves the farmers’ boys and girls who have pet squirrels to let the fact be known, if they are willing to part with them for a price.”
Rutland had trouble with trigger-happy hunters in 1932. “If the Rutland Fish and Game Association has its way, a doughty hunter living in the vicinity of River Street will pay for shooting one of the pet squirrels recently brought here from Proctor.”
Apparently, there was a commercial market for these animals. The Balch Squirrel Farm in Castleton advertised red squirrels and chipmunks in Field and Stream as recently as the 1970s.
As dogs and cats found their way to hearth and home, wild animals as pets lost favor. Consequently, we hear very little about squirrel pets today. Possession of wild animals was explicitly prohibited by Vermont statute in 1997.
Paul Heller is a writer and historian from Barre

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