While on assignment in South Grand Prairie Wednesday, NBC 5/Telemundo 39 photojournalist Sergio Alvarado shot a video of a rare squirrel.
The squirrel, with white hair, can be seen scampering across a lawn before playfully sprinting up a tree near Great Southwest Parkway and Interstate 20.
With its white hair, the fox squirrel was either a white squirrel or the rare true albino. Exactly which is tough to say since it’s hard to make out the animal’s eye color. Whether a white squirrel or an albino, in either case, the animal ends up with white hair, but the true albino has pink eyes due to a lack of pigment and no colored patches of hair while a white squirrel will still have brown eyes, and could have splotches of colored hair.
White or albino squirrels aren’t new to North Texas, or Texas for that matter. A true albino fox squirrel, dubbed Lucky, was a celebrity of sorts on the campus of the University of North Texas until his untimely demise in 2016. UNTs “Lucky” was believed to be one of several white squirrels who have called the campus home over the last few decades (a fox squirrel’s life span is typically six to seven years).
According to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, albino animals tend to have a tougher time with survival. Albino animals generally have poorer vision and are very sensitive to light. They also are disadvantaged when it comes to blending into their environment.
“This creates quite a problem for the albino predator trying to sneak up on lunch, or the albino prey trying to hide from its enemies. As you would expect, the white predator often starves and the white prey quickly is found and eaten,” the parks department said in an online article.
The parks department estimates true albinism happens only very rarely in the wild — once every 100,000 births. Others say it could be 10 times as rare, happening once out of every million births.
In either case, if you see a white or albino squirrel, consider yourself at least a little lucky.
