The Evening Telegraph has a charming story about a baby squirrel that “adopted” park ranger Mark Swift to become an unofficial mascot of the beautiful Central Park in Cambridgeshire.

Apparently the baby squirrel just started following Mr. Swift around. The baby squirrel, which he named nicknamed, Oakley Junior, was housed at the park and was given an old hedgehog box to sleep in. During the day he would climb all over Mr. Swift and liked to steal treats from children’s lunch boxes.

Eventually Mr. Swift placed the squirrel with a local rehabber who raised it along with the dozen other baby squirrels she had in her care and that is where the story, which was originally published in 2008, ends.

But wait! The intrepid reporters here at Nuts About Squirrels have an update. We contacted Mr. Swift who told us that Oakley Junior was successfully released into the wild and that he “was last seen in a tree belt playing with other squirrels” behind the rehabber’s house.

The Oklahoma City sheriff’s office claims to have caught a squirrel that had been damaging police vehicles.

Apparently the squirrel, which they nicknamed Chewy, had been chewing through the vehicle’s wiring. Damage to the vehicles is estimated at $700.

They posted this Youtube video of the alleged perpetrator. My question: how do they know they caught the right squirrel?

The Toronto Sun also has an article on Chewy, including some banter on Twitter between the sheriff’s office and a squirrel using the nickname ‘@OKCBadSquirrel‘.

Oddly, this isn’t the first case of rodents damaging vehicle wiring. See this MSNBC report for example about rabbits eating through the wires of cars at the Denver airport.

Apparently the wiring in newer cars is coated with a “sweet-tasting” soy-based insulation and all sorts of animals are developing a taste for it, from possums to squirrels.

Maybe the manufacturers should mix cayenne pepper into the soy-based insulation?

The Daily Home, of Talladega, Ala. reported a sighting of a white squirrel in the area.

When asked what it was doing, the squirrel was unable to comment because it is a squirrel, but the article speculates that the squirrel was “Looking for food,” which is almost certainly true.

The article has some interesting information about the genetic causes of white fur in eastern grey squirrels.

In Toronto we have a few white squirrels in Trinity Bellwoods Park. They have become a sort of unofficial mascot of the area, there is even a coffee shop, White Squirrel Coffee, named after them.

I also used to spot them in Montreal once in a while.