Are there really that many Squirrels?

Every so often I notice a squirrel prancing around my home in Landing, but rarely can I walk the Lehigh campus and ignore the large population of squirrels.  Today, I counted the squirrels I walked by, and I stopped after 30.  I had walked from Packard Lab to Linderman Library.  I did it again, only this time I kept my head straight, I still counted only 13.  So I decided to scan through my face book chat list and asked a few people.  Here are their stories:

A senior in D Chi

“I was taking out garbage one day and I’m walking over to the Trembley dumpster.  I opened the dumpster and a squirrel jumped out and I scream like a girl.  These girls saw me and I was so scared that I just ran and just left the trash there.”

A senior in Theta

“I got cornered by a bunch of squirrels my freshman year.  They chased me back to Dravo.  I was walking from the dining hall.  It was winter and they were getting ornery.”

A sophomore in Psi U

“I was walking to class from my house between Trembley and the parking garage I saw a hawk fly by a tree, rip a squirrel off of it, and devour it on the front lawn.”

A junior in theta

“One time I was walking out of the house and it jumped from the porch to a tree and clung onto it.”

A senior off campus

 “I was walking and it ran out in front of me and I accidentally kicked it.”

A senior in D chi

“One time I saw a kid have a staring contest for 30 seconds.”

As I was asking people for their stories, I was also typing into Google.com trying to see what Lehigh’s squirrel population was.  I found out we have a five-out-of-five squirrel ranking.  Please click on this link to find out more about five-squirrel ranked schools. http://www.kstatecollegian.com/k-state-ranks-high-on-squirrel-population-list-1.724697  

The best advice I can give those with squirrel problems is to read this link.  http://www.unitedwildlife.com/animalssquirrel.html .  Hopefully you won't have to use any of these methods but some of those squirrels are feisty and vengeful so be careful.