Right, so I've never been to the Pacific Northwest but now I'm genuinely gutted about it because a jet black squirrel sounds absolutely mint and I need one in my life immediately.
We get the odd melanistic grey squirrel here in Cheshire occasionally - proper ink-black little lads - so it's not entirely unheard of as a phenomenon, just a melanin mutation thing rather than a separate species. That said, the Pacific Northwest is basically the capital of cryptid energy on the planet, so I wouldn't rule anything out too quickly.
The real question is: how black are we talking? Because there's ". Slightly dark grey squirrel". Black and then there's ". Absorbed all light like a tiny furry void". Black, and those are very different conversations.
Anyone managed to get decent photos? I'd love to see if the eyes are the standard squirrel colour or whether they've gone full demon mode with dark irises too - melanistic animals sometimes carry that. Grabbed my old Canon EOS last summer trying to photograph something odd moving through the treeline near Delamere Forest and the lighting absolutely destroyed the evidence, so I feel the pain of anyone trying to document this properly.
Would genuinely love to know the exact location too - is this woodland, suburban gardens, coastal areas? Distribution patterns sometimes tell you more than the animal itself does.
Don't let anyone dismiss this as boring zoology either - unusual animal variants turning up in specific regions consistently is exactly the kind of thing that deserves proper documentation. What are people actually seeing out there? 👀