True story: Indy's squirrel invasion of 1822

Squirrels are causing trouble on Indianapolis' west side, but the city has endured far worse from the low-slung creatures.

Like in 1822. That was a big deal, that was a squirrel "invasion."

Today there are "reports of aggressive squirrels" pestering students and staff at IUPUI, university officials advised in a blog post reported by IndyStar.com Thursday. "Squirrels may look cute," the university official said, "and they are fun to watch scampering about, but they should not be treated as pets."

But in the fall of 1822, squirrels didn't even look cute, and they were certainly no fun to watch. Hordes of gray squirrels, thousands of them, streamed across the city. They came, from east to west, "in almost countless numbers and swarmed through town," writes the historian David G. Vanderstel in the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis.

On an emotional level, the specter of squirrels uniting in common cause (in the early 19th century they would have outnumbered the citizens of fledgling Indianapolis by a lot) is Alfred Hitchcock-level creepy.

Pragmatically, it was very bad for business. "Many people lost whole cornfields," noted Calvin Fletcher, one of 19th century Indianapolis' leading citizens. The way Fletcher figured, a dozen hungry squirrels could do as much damage to a cornfield as a hog, which is a lot of damage.

The squirrel situation today:Trouble appears confined to westside

The farmers fought back. Fletcher observed that (in the days before DNR limits on squirrel hunting) one farmer killed 248 squirrels in three days. But even such "massacre made no impression on their (the squirrels') countless numbers."

What led to this freaky chapter in Indiana's natural history? A likely theory is that the surrounding woodlands that year did not produce enough nuts to satisfy the squirrels' appetites, and that the beasts went on the move to ensure their survival.

In 1845 squirrels mounted a similar but smaller assault on Indianapolis. The city survived that episode as well.

Indiana's first recorded squirrel episode occurred in 1811, five years before statehood. The Indiana Historical Society's Marianne Sheline describes the scene in an unusual video presentation, unusual because she begins the presentation by eating a hot pepper.

Squirrels swim poorly, Sheline said, and so the trip across the Ohio River was problematic. But, she said, drowned squirrels float, and so subsequent waves of squirrels were able to cross the mighty river by running on the backs of their deceased brethren.

A personal note: Squirrels may not be strong swimmers, but they can swim, at least for a while. Several years ago I was interviewing Karen Freeman-Wilson, then Indiana's attorney general, in University Park, in front of that Calder fountain. 

A squirrel somehow got into the fountain and did a sort of dog paddle. But it seemed to get more and more frantic, even in the extremely low water.

Sensing the squirrel's strength was running out, I sort of dismantled a state-owned trash receptacle and offered a slab of wood, a sort of bridge, to the desperate squirrel. 

The thing jumped at the offer and scurried up the slab of wood to dry land, and no I'm not a hero.

Contact Star reporter Will Higgins at (317) 444-6043. Follow him on Twitter @WillRHiggins. 

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