A Whitman woman spotted a rare sight near her home: a white squirrel.
Jennifer Reardon snapped a picture of the squirrel, which is part of the gray squirrel family, the Patriot Ledger reported.
Gray squirrels range from black to white – a defense mechanism that helps squirrels adapt to their surroundings. A white squirrel blends in better in a birch forest, the newspaper reported.
Greg Mertz at the New England Wildlife Center in South Weymouth told the newspaper that the center sees about one or two white squirrels a year compared with about 300 gray squirrels. Black versions of the gray squirrel are slightly more common on the South Shore, Mertz said.
