During a vacation excursion to the Orlando area, Bob Glesener happened upon a Wildlife Rehabilitation and Refuge Center known as Back To Nature Wildlife, Inc.   There amongst cages housing everything from injured bald eagles to half-wolves was a white squirrel named Melanie (could the name be a play on words referring to the pigment melanin she is so conspicously lacking?).  Melanie shares her cage with her sister Missy who, although raised by human hands from the same litter, is a normal gray squirrel.  Melanie, herself, is not only white but has the same basic pattern of pigmentation, i.e. dark markings on the head and paws, a dorsal stripe and dark eyes, as the white squirrels of Brevard.  This pattern is sometimes referred to as the "blonde" color variant.  However, her head patch is broader than that of the North Carolina population.   It will be interesting to see if Melanie's dorsal strip falls within the limits of variation of the Brevard population, once that study has been completed.  Upon first observation, it too would seem to be broader than that of our own squirrels. According to popular folklore, white squirrels arrived in Brevard from Florida.  There a circus train crash released white squirrels of questionable origin who established a population in  the surrounding Jacksonville area. 

 A nearby resident delivered a pair to relatives in Brevard in 1949 who eventually "released" them.  Today, white squirrels with similar markings are found from Lake Toxaway to the west and Hendersonville to the east (a span of approximately 50 miles), interbreeding with native gray squirrels.  They apparently spread from Brevard by either migration or trapping.   Melanie was captured in Kissimmee FL where observers feared for her survival because of her contrasting coloration (see Melanie's Biography from Back To Nature, Inc.).  Other than Melanie, capturers were unaware of white squirrels in that area at the time.   However, since the appearance of an article in Back to Nature's newsletter Wildlife Matters, numerous sightings have been reported in the greater Orlando area (including Brevard, Osceola and Polk Counties).  Kissimmee is some 160 miles south of Jacksonville (although we have yet to identify a white squirrel population in that city, there are populations West in the panhandle - see below).  Could Melanie be derived from the same parental stock as the Brevard population?  Could genes for the white morph have spread through migration or trapping to Kissimmee?  Perhaps, the alleged train wreck happened further south than legend would have it.  Or is it possible that this is merely a reoccurring genetic anomaly arising independently in many locations only to be weeded out because of its selective disadvantage, i.e., higher rates of predation and social ostracism?