Once upon a time, U.S. cities didn’t have gray squirrels. No, seriously

“The first introductions of free-living squirrels to urban centers took place in cities along the Eastern Seaboard between the 1840s and the 1860s. Philadelphia seems to have been the pioneering city, with Boston and New Haven, Connecticut, following soon after. In 1847 three squirrels were released in Philadelphia's Franklin Square and were provided with food and boxes for nesting. Additional squirrels were introduced in the following years, and by 1853 gray squirrels were reported to be present in Independence, Walnut Street, and Logan Squares, where the city supplied nest boxes and food, and where visiting children often provided supplementary nuts and cakes. In 1857 a recent visitor to Philadelphia noted that the city's squirrels were ‘so tame that they will come and take nuts out of one's hand’ and added so much to the liveliness of the parks that ‘it was a wonder that they are not in the public parks of all great cities.’ Boston followed Philadelphia's example by introducing a handful of gray squirrels to Boston Common in 1855, and New Haven had a population of squirrels on its town green by the early 1860s.”

http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/content/100/3/691.full?keytype=ref&ijkey=ByeKoj3TP8suXw0

(Another example of people who didn’t know a damn thing about animals deciding we need them in places they don’t belong.)

At www.fark.com