MIA CIECHALSKI
Special to The Leader
SUNY Fredonia is notorious for some of its fuzzy friends who also reside on campus alongside the students.
Yes, we are talking about the squirrels that always seem to get a mix of reactions from everyone, mainly due to some of their random actions that no one really seems to expect.
While on campus, you will see a variety of squirrels that range from brown, to black, and even tailless.
A large number of students always seem to have some sort of squirrel story up their sleeves from doing their day-to-day strolls on campus.
Maya Kulick, a sophomore animation major said a squirrel threw a nut at her car as she was getting ready to drive back to her house one day.
“I was just sitting in my car, and all of a sudden, I heard a random clunk hit my car,” she said.
Kulick also said, “It was very random and was probably the last thing I was expecting to happen during my day.”
Another student, Gianna Cash, a sophomore biology major, has had a squirrel encounter herself, except this time, it was she and her friends who decided to switch roles and be the ones that come up to the furry little creatures instead.
She said, “The only squirrel story I have is when my friends randomly decided to chase a squirrel up a tree one day just because they felt like it.”
Many people on campus always give the squirrels food, so the squirrels are kind of desensitized — they’re not afraid to keep coming up to people.
Another random squirrel encounter that Chasey Folck, a sophomore BFA dance major, had was when she was near University Commons on her daily Starbucks run. She had a squirrel scurry across her foot and it scared her.
If you walk around campus long enough, you’ll also see squirrels garbage diving at least once a day, mainly due to the fact that they are used to the food that they receive from the students.
One squirrel story in particular left a lasting impression on sophomore acting major Ryan Okun at the end of the Fall 2022 semester.
He said, “I was walking back to my dorm from my last class of the semester, and I was entering the walkway that leads to Kasling. Then a bush rustled a lot on a not-so-windy day, and a squirrel jumped from nowhere and scared my friend and I.”
“After that moment happened, we couldn’t stop laughing. We now have an inside joke when it comes to the campus squirrels, and always send each other pictures of squirrels,” he said.
The squirrels here are so popular with the student body that someone on campus made an Instagram account full of pictures of them.
The username for this account is FredSquirrels.
Students just send in whatever pictures they take of a squirrel they came across one day, and if it’s worthy enough to be featured, then you’ll have it posted on the account for multiple other people to enjoy.
Some other students have definitely had an even weirder story than most though, like Maisie Strader and Abigail Jacobson, a junior communications major.
Strader said she was “walking to the creek and I walked upon a squirrel eating the yellow sidewalk line next to the health center.”
While Jacobson was walking back to her dorm with her brother one day, they had a squirrel follow them back home.
“We named him Frenchy,” she said.
Everyone seems to love our funky little critters here at SUNY Fredonia.
Abigail Jacobson and Maisie Strader, who are interviewed in this article, are the Assistant News Editor and the Ad Sales Manager, respectively, of The Leader.