I Saw a White Squirrel

It was two days before I would be returning by plane to Oregon for the summer. Time was tight. I had just a one-hour booking for Oberlin’s electric vehicle carshare so I could check on my storage unit space before bringing stuff over the following evening. I tore myself away from my work on my creative writing final project only once my booking had already started (so I urgently needed to get to the car location, which was halfway across campus from my workroom in Wilder Hall). As I was briskly walking through the trip, I cut across a strip of grass that took me alongside a small gravel driveway. My mind was still on my final and how I would fit things in storage and in general how I was going to manage to get all my loose ends tied up before getting on a plane the morning after the next one. I glanced upward from my feet only to see if I was still headed in the right direction. And bam!

The world stopped, crystallized, stood stock still. My eyes likely bulged out as I struggled to believe the reality of what was before me. For a moment, the ever-whirring gears of my day became obsolete as I beheld the ivory, glowing glory of Oberlin college’s mascot.

A white squirrel was hunched before me in the gravel. Simple, silent, and incredible. I felt like I was floating or dreaming as I stood before it, even as it began the veritably mundane squirrel activity of nosing through the gravel, seemingly either burying or unearthing some bit of food. For nearly three years of my Oberlin career I yearned just to catch a glimpse of one of the campus’s white squirrels. And I had to see one when I was in such a critical rush right here and now?

Despite my dwindling car booking time, I stayed and observed the furry creature, rapt, as it quietly dug in the gravel, raised its snout, sniffed the air, turned one way, and then turned another. It was apparently completely oblivious to the nearly divine gift its presence was to me. I kept having to reexamine the creature’s shape to convince myself I was really seeing the squirrel’s bushy tail, tiny paws, and matted fur. It stayed poking about for so long, just a few feet away, that I was able to take a video of it. I was struck repeatedly by how mundane it was to be watching a squirrel like any other, and yet how I was simultaneously in awe seeing our college’s mascot. 

When I finally tore myself from the scene to head to the EV car, I encountered another student walking past me and looking to be in a similar hurry to the one I’d been in. 

“Shhh,” I said to them, “there’s a white squirrel around the corner!”

They said, “Thanks!” with a genuine spark in their eyes, before I left for my errand. 

This shocking, rather unfortunately timed moment, was actually not my only sighting of a white squirrel. I had glimpsed one for the very first time around three weeks prior while out on a bird-watching excursion with my ornithology class. The whole class had gasped in response to one student pointing and huddled together while using our binoculars to try to glimpse a white speck half obscured by the twisted trees. After I’d watched it around ten minutes, with the others having deserted the sight, it finally moved in such a way I could be certain it had a tale and squirrel-shaped body (rather than just being some other strange, white object in the trees, as could have been the case with it being so far away). 

Needless to say, I was blown away by that first sighting, despite it not featuring quite the wonder I felt when I subsequently encountered one of the creatures on my own. Some students and professors at Oberlin don’t find a sighting of a white squirrel too remarkable because they themselves have seen them countless times. I guess they used to be more common on the campus than they are now, but I had always felt cheated by not having glimpsed one before this year. Many of my friends had, and I’d even seen pictures of their sightings. Somehow the squirrels had just seemed to be avoiding me.

In my literary journalism class second year, I completed my course project about our squirrel mascot’s history and present. To summarize some key points of what I found out, people have had various takes on their acceptance of the furry creature being our mascot icon while the “Yeomen” and “Yeowomen” (referring to small-scale farmers) have remained the mascot names given to our sports teams. I’m personally a fan of Oberlin’s rather unique choice to feature a special local critter in a mascot role, but am dismayed that the particular image of a white squirrel the college has adopted (named Yeobie) is inconsistent with the squirrels living on campus. The mascot is shown as an albino squirrel, meaning it has red eyes in addition to its white fur. The creatures on campus are simply white squirrels, however, which have black eyes because their lack of pigmentation affects only their fur itself (which I can confirm was the case on the one I saw up close). 

Whether I’d seen a white squirrel became an issue that mattered to me and felt correlated with my sense of belonging at Oberlin because of the mascot’s role in our school identity. One of the interview questions posed to all RAs whose get-to-know-you boards I saw up in the halls my first year was “How many times have you seen the white squirrel?”. Among students, there’s even a superstition that you won’t graduate if you don’t see a white squirrel, with some taking it so far as to say you won’t graduate if you don’t see one in your first year!

With all this in mind, I imagine you can understand why seeing a white squirrel on campus was a substantial event for me, and one I wanted to be able to share with the world. Coming at the end of my third year, this event correlated well with when I was feeling a stronger sense of belonging and community than ever at the school. It’s one more unique Oberlin experience I’ll carry with me which can help my love for this place to blossom even further as I enter my final year.

If you’re considering applying or committing to Oberlin, our exotic rodents could serve as one additional, cool reason to choose us. Where should you go looking for the white squirrels for the best chances of spotting one? For the sake of not removing all the mystery, I’ll leave that up to you to investigate (though the limited information I wrote about in this article should already provide some good general clues as to where to start for a dedicated sleuth). 

In any case, I’m glad I at last saw a white squirrel and I do wish for both present and future Obies that they get this privilege as well. A heartfelt goodbye for now, and I’ll look forward to writing more blogs in my upcoming fourth year!