No one in the state counts squirrels officially.
A squirrel in Lewiston’s Kennedy Park examines an acorn safely near the road on Tuesday afternoon. State officials and motorists say they’re seeing more squirrels killed in traffic this year than last year. (Andree Kehn/Sun Journal)
Unofficially, the bodies are stacking up.
Maine biologists, motorists and road crews are seeing more squirrels successfully make it across the street — and not — after a healthy crop of acorns and other nuts last fall led to a robust squirrel population this year.
It’s the time of year for the young to disperse and they’re all trying to squirrel away food for winter, according to Griffin Dill, an integrated pest management professional at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.
“They’re really quite active right now, which of course leads them to wander across roads,” he said. “Things are winding down for the year for them and they know it.”
In New Hampshire, a state wildlife biologist said a motorist reported counting 390 dead squirrels in a 50-mile drive from the lakes region in that state to the Massachusetts border.
Patrick Tate’s advice to motorists: Don’t swerve.
Squirrels dart left and right as a survival mechanism to confuse predators, said Tate, a wildlife biologist at the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department.
“They see the car as a predator, they don’t see it as a straight, moving object,” he said. “Just stay in the straight line — there’s a higher chance of the squirrel evading what they see as a predator than if we swerve. When we leave our travel lane is when we’re putting ourselves in danger.”
In his state, he’s seeing oak and hickory trees producing fewer nuts this year than last, which leads to another potential theory behind all the recent road activity: Squirrels that aren’t finding enough to eat right now can become immunosuppressed and unable to fight off rodent diseases as well as healthy animals.
“Animals that have diseases will make less wise decisions or (have) more risky behavior, and they (may) not be able to outrun motor vehicles like they normally could, or outrun hawks,” Tate said.
He said he hasn’t yet tested any squirrels.
The Maine Department of Transportation doesn’t log roadkill pickups, according to a spokesman. They’re handled in the normal course of business.
The Maine Turnpike Authority does track it from mile 0 at the state line to mile 109 in Augusta: there were 598 removals in 2016, 794 last year and 407 this year as of Aug. 31. Those numbers, however, tend to pertain to larger animals, according to Kristen Kloth, manager of the traffic management center.
“Small animals such as squirrels are often not called into us by our maintenance crews because they are not a road hazard,” said Kloth. “We have heard from them that there have certainly been more than years past, but I don’t have a number to go with it.”
On Sunday, Kevin Burns of Portland counted 51 dead squirrels on the side of the road on I-295, between the Washington Avenue on ramp in Portland and Topsham. Headed south between those same two points later that day, he counted another 53.
“I was amazed,” he said. “First of all, I’m not used to seeing squirrels dead on the highway at all, and to see that many of them really blew my mind. When I posted something about it (on Facebook), the feedback that I got about it, everybody’s seeing the same thing. They’re all seeing a bunch of dead squirrels everywhere.”
Dill said he’s heard from areas of the state this year where people felt like they were seeing more gray squirrels. “Bangor in particular had several neighborhoods where the residents felt like they were being overrun,” he said.
Scott Lindsay, a Maine state wildlife biologist out of Gray, said more acorns and other nuts last fall meant more squirrels made it through the winter and increased the odds that their young — born in litters of three to six at a time, around March/April and August/September — would survive. Squirrels only spend three to four months at home before striking out on their own, he said.
“Anyone that commutes any distance, they’re seeing a lot of squirrels jump out into the road, running back,” Lindsay said. “They could probably continue dispersing right to the fall. I suspect it’s going to continue to be fairly high numbers.”
kskelton@sunjournal.com
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