The Nutty Era When Squirrels Were America’s Hottest Pet

When a pet doesn’t make the big three along with dogs and cats, it’s usually for a good reason. They might be hard to find, expensive or require you to keep a box of live crickets under your bed. Or they’re guaranteed to raise absolute hell. Most people want a pet so they can come home to cuddles, not peanut butter on the ceiling.

Which is why I can’t fathom what launched a period in American history where the hottest pet around was a squirrel. That’s a remarkable amount of chaos to voluntarily introduce to your home. It’s basically like having a tiny monkey that’s always terrified. Yet, for a huge amount of families in the 18th and 19th century, a little nut-lover was worth having their curtains forever look like they were purchased from a haunted house.

Apparently, it may have been rooted in a pick-your-poison scenario. Kids of yore were fond of locking wild animals in their homes and calling them pets, so in that regard, squirrels probably seemed relatively chill. These weren’t low-class critters either, but a pet the rich and famous would show off in portraits, confined with lovely little chains. Not that they were exclusively owned by the well-to-do, since you could easily purchase one from local pet suppliers.

Per Atlas Obscura, an 1851 book about pet care devoted more pages to squirrels than it did to rabbits. Though it doesn’t dispute that they were up to usual squirrel shenanigans. They’re described as “very agile,” which is a real double-edged sword when it comes to an animal you only want exploring specific places. They also were notorious for, unsurprisingly, packing your walls full of treat. Just in case you wanted to min-max your stress levels, some families even owned flying squirrels, adding a constant threat of aerial assault as well.

I’ll admit, the cute pictures are enough to make me see some of the appeal. But all it takes to quash that is to read one to two articles entitled things like “12 Things You MUST Know Before Getting A Squirrel.” I’ll give you a hint: It’s not 12 awesome things. 

If the fact that they need some sort of Goldilocks-just-right mesh cage that they can neither slip through nor chew holes in, that they’re very difficult to train and that you shouldn’t expect them to ever respond to the name you gave them didn’t close the door completely? Reading that when they’re babies, they can’t go to the bathroom by themselves and that you need to knead piss out of them with a cotton ball through the grossest form of capillary action I’ve ever heard of ought to do it.

But hey, who am I to yuck your yum if you want a pet that will start a house fire by hiding chewed-up newspaper behind your radiator? Go nuts. Pun intended.