09/13/2026
Have you seen a white squirrel?
šæļø Hickory's White Squirrels Are Missing From the National List
HICKORY, N.C. ā The White Squirrel Institute in Brevard keeps a national list of white squirrel colonies, one it acknowledges is incomplete. It includes Denver, in Lincoln County, where a resident reported seeing four or five at a time near Lake Norman. Hickory is not on it.
Foothills Digest, a regional magazine, is trying to fix that. It has opened a public map where anyone can drop a pin on the spot they saw one, and says residents have reported white squirrels here for decades, with St. Stephens coming up again and again.
They are not albinos. Most have dark eyes and gray markings on the head or back, a color variation of the Eastern gray squirrel that biologists call leucistic. Brevard's population traces to a pair captured in Florida and released there around 1951. How Hickory got its own has never been documented.
Old memories count. The map takes an approximate year with no exact date, and the magazine specifically wants to hear from people who remember white squirrels in a particular neighborhood years ago.
Where have you seen one, and how long have they been in your neighborhood?
The link to report a sighting is in the comment section.
Sunday, September 13, 2026, 1:30 PM
