PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • October 27, 2025
Doug Hitchcox, staff naturalist at Maine Audubon, said there’s no good data set that tracks the size of the squirrel population, but after the previous couple years produced bumper crops of acorns for them to eat (much like in 2018), it makes sense that more would have survived the past winter and gone on to produce more babies. University of New England professor Noah Perlut, who in 2010 started a project studying gray squirrel behavior around the Biddeford campus, said he’s noticed more of them this fall than any other year since 2018 — what he and Hitchcox both refer to as Squirrelmageddon. This year, their presence may be more pronounced because the lack of acorns is forcing them to travel farther in search of food, Perlut said, creating more opportunities for interactions with cars. If new generations are coming online every year, shouldn’t evolution have taken care of their ability to cross the street without running right back into it at the moment they’re most likely to be run over? ~ Leslie Bridgers