Fire Red Squirrels !!link!! May 2026

A single fire red squirrel can cache up to 3,000 cones in a season, often forgetting half of them—thus becoming an unwitting . The forgotten cones germinate into new trees, ensuring the next generation of forest. In this way, the squirrel is both child of fire and its gardener.

But perhaps the squirrel has one more trick. In 2023, researchers discovered that fire red individuals in northern Sweden have begun choosing to nest in recently burned areas, where fresh growth of fireweed and raspberry offers abundant food. They are adapting—not fleeing from fire, but returning to it. fire red squirrels

Estonian peasants believed that killing a fire red squirrel would cause one’s own hearth to go cold. In parts of rural Sweden, farmers would leave out small bowls of lingonberry jam in winter, hoping to lure the “fire-sprite squirrel” to their barns, believing it would protect stored grain from lightning strikes. A single fire red squirrel can cache up