Westland University Warns: The Michigan Stowaway!
Westland University warns that the average suburban squirrel travels ten miles a day by car. It has several drivers. And you may be its most interesting one.
WESTLAND, Mich.—The average Michigan squirrel travels ten miles a day by motor vehicle, according to a disturbing report from Westland University that raises serious questions about suburban wildlife, fuel economy, and who exactly owns your car.
The animals enter parked vehicles from below, maintain small concealed storage compartments, and change cars at established transfer points throughout the metropolitan area. Most motorists remain unaware they are participating in a regional transportation system whose principal destinations are supermarkets, relatives, and somebody behind a garage in Canton.
“For years, we assumed a squirrel crossing a parking lot was looking for food,” said the university’s lead scientist. “In many cases, it is making a connection.”
Westland University, a research institution began its investigation at the front window. Observations were subsequently repeated at the back window to address concerns about bias.
The findings suggest that squirrels have built an extensive transit network around a resource humans have long underestimated: the extraordinary predictability of people who believe they lead complicated lives.
A man who leaves for work at 7:42 and returns at 5:18 may regard himself as complex and mysterious.
To a squirrel, he is the number 4.
A transportation system with snacks
The vehicles are boarded discreetly, through the underside, into small recesses motorists generally classify as “something the mechanic knows about.”
There, researchers report, squirrels maintain organized stores of nuts, crumbs, and objects whose future usefulness is apparent only to the squirrel.
One compartment contained two walnuts, part of a shoelace, a blue plastic fragment, and a french fry that appeared to have acquired structural responsibilities.
“We initially described the plastic as rubbish,” the scientist said. “But the squirrel has kept it because it might come in handy. At that point, we had to acknowledge it was operating a garage.”
Although the occasional squirrel accepts a ride without knowing the destination, experienced commuters select vehicles by household routine.
The school-run car offers dependable morning service. The retired couple provides excellent access to garden centers, although return times are uncertain. The person who says they are “just popping out for one thing” is suitable only for squirrels with no afternoon commitments.
Work-from-home households are considered unreliable.
Supermarket parking lots serve as the network’s principal interchanges. Here, squirrels can transfer between neighborhoods while taking advantage of a food supply that replenishes itself whenever someone believes they can carry twelve bags at once.
A passenger may arrive from Westland, spend twenty minutes inspecting the underside of a shopping cart, and depart for Livonia in a completely different vehicle.
To the motorist, it is an ordinary grocery trip.
To the squirrel, it is lunch, a connection, and an opportunity to move a walnut into a stronger market.
Food insecurity remains the driving force behind the system. A squirrel cannot afford to rely entirely on the generosity of one neighborhood, particularly when that neighborhood has recently discovered bird feeders advertised as squirrel-proof.
The university describes such feeders as “a recurring source of professional development.”
Some passengers travel for love
Not all journeys are economic.
Researchers have documented regular visits to relatives, including elderly squirrels whose established trees function as both family gathering places and repositories of strongly held opinions.
A visiting squirrel may bring its mother a carefully selected walnut, receive three walnuts in return, and be informed that it looks thin.
Other journeys are romantic.
The motor vehicle has dramatically expanded the suburban squirrel’s dating pool. A prospective partner once separated by six lawns, two roads, and an unreasonable terrier may now be accessible through a retired man’s weekly visit to the hardware store.
Courtship itself remains recognizable: pursuit around a tree, several abrupt changes of direction, a noisy misunderstanding, and a brief period during which both parties would prefer the university to look elsewhere.
A desirable mate is increasingly one with a good tail, dependable access to food, and a place in a vehicle whose owner keeps up with maintenance.
“He has his own place” can now mean a sheltered compartment in an accountant’s hatchback.
The university cautions that access to transport does not necessarily produce emotional maturity. Several observed relationships ended after one squirrel arrived with a nut and left with the nut.
The hidden passenger tax
For motorists, the immediate cost is the fuel required to carry additional weight.
A squirrel alone may represent only a few hundred grams. But a squirrel seldom travels alone in the accounting sense.
There are provisions. There are reserve provisions. There is a second reserve against the possibility that somebody finds the first reserve.
There are crumbs, nutshells, interesting rubbish, and occasionally babies, whose small individual mass should not distract from the fact that the driver has not agreed to transport them.
A vehicle believed to be carrying one adult to the pharmacy may therefore be carrying one adult, a squirrel, three dependents, and the contents of a very small storage unit.
The university has placed the added fuel expense in the category “less than you would spend trying to prove it.”
For an individual motorist, the extra grams impose a minute burden. Across an entire year, however, the arrangement includes repeated trips, free cargo handling, shelter, and a driver who pays for insurance.
“The scandal is not that they are bankrupting you,” the scientist said. “It is that they have negotiated an exceptionally favorable package without meeting you.”
Electric vehicles do not solve the problem.
“They simply allow the squirrel to describe its lifestyle as sustainable.”
Nor does the university recommend billing the passengers. A preliminary invoice left near one vehicle was taken away and incorporated into bedding.
The car may not be the transport
The report’s most troubling conclusion emerged when researchers attempted to determine where the passengers went home.
Some did not.
Squirrels observed returning to a vehicle in the evening remained there overnight. Others brought nesting material. In several cases, food was carried out of the garden and into the car.
The direction of the groceries proved significant.
“We had been calling these spaces storage compartments,” the scientist said. “Then we found the nursery.”
The university now believes that some apparently wild suburban squirrels use concealed vehicle compartments as their primary households.
Trees, in these cases, are not residences.
They are outdoor amenities.
The arrangement offers substantial seasonal advantages. In winter, the occupants remain largely sheltered from wind and snow, enjoying pockets of residual warmth without ever being asked whether the thermostat really needs to be that high.
In summer, cool eddies from air-conditioning systems provide what the report calls “climate-adjacent accommodation.”
The residents do not operate these systems themselves. They have retained a large mammal who becomes uncomfortable at approximately the right times.
A move to another neighborhood requires neither a lease nor a removal company. The household simply waits for its driver to develop an interest in a different supermarket.
Researchers believe this may represent the beginning of an almost-new species: the Mobile Squirrel, accompanied by its increasingly specialized service animal, the Human Driver.
These Metro Squirrels maintain family connections across neighborhoods, raise young in moving homes, and inherit routes that may have been established generations ago.
The behavior could be considerably older than anyone suspects.
“We keep asking when squirrels learned to use our cars,” the scientist said. “But some of these families may have been in the auto industry longer than ours.”
The university is now reconsidering decades of apparently ordinary sightings: the squirrel waiting beside a driveway, the squirrel inspecting a wheel, the squirrel on a fence watching someone search their pockets for keys.
These may not have been encounters with wildlife.
They may have been complaints about punctuality.
Residents are therefore urged to reconsider the reassuring phrase my car, particularly when using it within earshot of a squirrel carrying bedding.
“The car is their house,” the scientist said.
“You’re the part that goes to work.”