John Benson (left) assistant professor of vertebrate ecology, and John Carroll, director of the University of Nebraska's School of Natural Resources, install a nesting box for flying squirrels Wednesday on Lincoln's East Campus.
GWYNETH ROBERTS, Journal Star
John Carroll (left), director of the University of Nebraska's School of Natural Resources, works with Larkin Powell, a professor of conservation biology, to place a nesting box for flying squirrels on Lincoln's East Campus.
GWYNETH ROBERTS, Journal Star
John Carroll, director of the University of Nebraska's School of Natural Resources, labels the flying squirrel nesting box he built in his basement workshop.
GWYNETH ROBERTS, Journal Star
John Benson, UNL assistant professor of vertebrate ecology, installs a nesting box for flying squirrels Dec. 22 East Campus. Researchers are hoping more people will install boxes in hopes of attracting the squirrels and helping with their research.
The crew cutting down a dying oak on East Campus earlier this month expected to uncover a hollow limb.
They didn’t expect a little head to pop out of the hole.
“We’re like, ‘What the heck is that?’” said Brian Dieterman, assistant manager for the university’s landscape services. “We’re used to seeing squirrels in trees, but this didn’t look like a squirrel.”
Neither did the next three animals that emerged and peered down with oversized eyes, as bewildered by the encounter as the humans who were staring back up at them.
Then they scurried. Some went up the tree; some went down. They circled the trunk. But one by one, they settled on the same perch about 30 feet off the ground.
“And then they jumped, and floated over to the next tree.”
The whole scene took only a minute or two, but it was enough time for one of Dieterman’s co-workers to record the last leap -- the tiny animal sailing to the next oak over and slipping out of view.
The 20-second video found its way to the inbox of Larkin Powell, a professor of conservation biology.
He watched the animal’s outstretched arms, winglike flaps stretched between front and hind paws, as it leapt from tree to tree. He listened to the response of the crew watching from the ground.
“Oh, my God,” one said.
“That’s insane,” said another.
And it was, in a way. The video proved flying squirrels had settled on East Campus. But they weren’t supposed to be there, at least not lately.
As far as Powell knew, the only remaining Nebraska population of the nocturnal and tiny animals -- they weigh about as much as a tennis ball, or a deck of cards -- was 90 miles away in the state’s southeast corner, among the dense, hardwood forests near Indian Cave State Park.
Yet they had been living undetected -- until now -- in the treetops just above the animal experts at the university’s School of Natural Resources.
Powell was surprised by their presence, but not by their elusiveness.
“It’s among the species that’s harder to document because they’re not out when people are around,” he said. “And they’re little dudes.”
Powell contacted the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, on the northwest corner of the campus.
Shaun Dunn, a natural heritage zoologist for the state, was not as surprised. He turned to his computer, called up a spreadsheet and added the latest Lincoln sightings to a growing list.
The first two confirmed flying squirrel reports came in 2018, from the Country Club Neighborhood, though it could have been the same animal spotted twice.
Dunn and his colleagues recorded another sighting in 2019, in the Eastridge Neighborhood, six in 2020 -- many of them near the College View area -- and two more last year, in the West A and Country Club neighborhoods.
The East Campus reports increased the number of confirmed sightings to 15.
But the commission hasn’t recorded any reports from the expanse between Lincoln and Indian Cave State Park, where it might expect to see them if the animals were moving here on their own.
“And that started giving us all sorts of questions about how did they get here?”
They have theories.
Last year, a Windstream crew surprised a mother and two young inside a plastic boot wrapped around communication wires a block north of Southeast High School.
Maybe the squirrels hitched a ride north on a utility truck?
Or did they get caught up in camping equipment at Indian Cave and end up in Lincoln?
Or were they escaped pets? If that were the case, and they were the state’s native southern flying squirrels, it would have been illegal to keep them, because the species is considered threatened in Nebraska.
If they were another species, like northern flying squirrels, that would be concerning, too, because Dunn didn’t know whether they could dilute or disrupt the gene pool of the southern flying squirrel.
But Dunn was almost certain the animals didn’t cross farm fields southeast of Lincoln to make it to the city. That would be too big of a leap.
“As a biologist, I’ve seen crazy things that animals can do. But it’s very unlikely they made it here on their own.”
Still, it’s clear Lincoln has a small but growing flying squirrel population. The nest with the juvenile pair found in the Windstream wires confirmed it. Flying squirrels were reproducing and raising families here.
“When I started working at the agency, people were starting to say, ‘We’re getting flying squirrels.’ Now that we’re starting to get more sightings, I’m more than willing to say we have a population. But I’m just dying to know how they got here.”
Now that flying squirrels had flown into their lap, the faculty at the School of Natural Resources saw research potential, and a teachable topic for their students.
There was a problem, though, Powell said. “It’s a species the rest of us know nothing about.”
But he knew a guy.
Don Althoff earned his master’s in 1978 on East Campus in poultry and wildlife sciences, researching Waverly-area coyotes.
The semi-retired wildlife conservation professor at Ohio’s University of Rio Grande has been studying southern flying squirrels for nearly 30 years.
“I’ve been doing it for a long time, chasing this one species,” he said. “My work right now is more of a passion than a requirement.”
He designed a flying squirrel-specific nesting box, and he and his students have installed 400 of them in trees across five Ohio counties.
They check the boxes regularly and, if animals are home, they block the front door, open a side hatch and further their research -- weighing the squirrels, attaching ear tags, taking scat samples and then sending them on their way.
He estimates he’s handled 2,000 flying squirrels in his career, giving him rare, daylight views of the normally nocturnal animals. He’s watched them glide 40, 50, even 75 yards upon their release. He’s watched them bank and veer around trees to get to their landing zone.
“It’s incredible. I’ve seen them make a right-angle turn.”
Though graceful in the air, the animals are awkward on the ground, he said. Their sail-like flaps runs from wrist to ankle, so they move more like a hobbled horse.
So he was surprised to hear they’d made it all the way to Lincoln. “I’m kind of shocked to know they’re there, and there’s a local population,” he said.
He was happy to help his alma mater. Althoff sent blueprints for his nesting box to Lincoln, and the director of the School of Natural Resources got busy in his basement.
John Carroll typically builds furniture in his wood shop. And birdhouses. He’s pretty sure he’s made a birdhouse for everyone at his school. But a squirrel house wasn’t that different, and it only took him about an hour and several pieces of pine to replicate Althoff’s design.
They installed it 10 feet up in another oak tree Wednesday, hoping to attract the displaced flying squirrels.
But that’s just the beginning. Carroll could see the student Wildlife Club getting involved, making multiple boxes and launching a monitoring project.
“We’re always looking for ways to turn everything into something educational for our students,” he said.
And Powell is planning to put up game cameras on campus, to try to capture the elusive animals in action.
There’s a lot to learn. Like: Why are they here? Are they joining the other animals crossing the Nebraska border recently in a natural northward migration, like armadillos, lesser prairie chickens and Eurasian collared doves?
He doesn’t know yet. But he has been looking up more when he's crossed campus.
“You just have to know if they were in that tree, and there were four of them, odds are they’re in a lot of other places you don’t see them.”
John Benson (left) assistant professor of vertebrate ecology, and John Carroll, director of the University of Nebraska's School of Natural Resources, install a nesting box for flying squirrels Wednesday on Lincoln's East Campus.
John Carroll (left), director of the University of Nebraska's School of Natural Resources, works with Larkin Powell, a professor of conservation biology, to place a nesting box for flying squirrels on Lincoln's East Campus.
John Carroll, director of the University of Nebraska's School of Natural Resources, labels the flying squirrel nesting box he built in his basement workshop.
John Benson, UNL assistant professor of vertebrate ecology, installs a nesting box for flying squirrels Dec. 22 East Campus. Researchers are hoping more people will install boxes in hopes of attracting the squirrels and helping with their research.