Ground squirrels are taking over a North Dakota city and officials are not amused

MINOT, N.D. (AP) — The Richardson’s ground squirrel weighs less than a pound, is about a foot long and is native to the northern Plains.

The little creature also is a ferocious tunneler, and it’s exasperating the people of Minot, North Dakota, where it’s burrowing everywhere from vacant lots to the middle of town, and growing more plentiful over the past two decades.

Now North Dakota’s fourth-largest city is fighting back, but even the pest control guy leading the charge acknowledges that it will be difficult to turn the tide against the rodent.

An uphill battle

Joshua Herman said fighting the squirrels is akin to “one guy standing against a massive storm.”

“If I’m trapping but my neighbor isn’t, well then, we’re really not going to get anywhere with it, long-term,” Herman said.

Ground squirrels have been an issue in Minot, a city of nearly 50,000 people, for at least 20 years, but the problem has dramatically worsened in the last few years, said Minot Street Department Superintendent Kevin Braaten.

It’s unclear how many of the squirrels live in Minot but it likely nears or even exceeds the city’s population.

“Gosh, there’s got to be tens of thousands of them in the area,” Herman said.

Officials in the city, a green spot along the winding Souris River surrounded by farmland and grassy prairie, know they can’t get rid of the squirrels, but hope to simply get the rodent numbers down.

“I don’t see the population ever going to zero,” Braaten said. “I mean, it’s almost impossible by the numbers that we have.”

Put another way, Minot won’t be able to rid itself of the squirrels because the animals have lived on the prairie for centuries. Outside of town, predators like coyotes, badgers, owls and even snakes love to dine on the squirrels. But in residential neighborhoods and even downtown, where few of their predators live, the rodents can roam pretty freely.

Greg Gullickson, an outreach biologist with the North Dakota Game and Fish Department, adds that the squirrels now have fewer grassland areas available to them and like the mowed spots they find in town.

No land is safe

Female squirrels typically give birth to litters of about six babies a year, so it’s easy to see how their numbers can quickly soar.

Herman said he kills 3,500 to 5,000 of them a year, primarily by putting snares and carbon monoxide into the holes, and using an air rifle.

“I’ve had calls downtown, calls in the mall, along the highways, here at the airport — really every part of the city I’ve done trapping for ground squirrels here in Minot,” Herman said as he checked his traps along an apartment building and shoveled dirt over holes.

Herman says they damage driveways, sidewalks and lawns; create tripping hazards with their holes and can harbor disease from fleas.

Along an apartment building, the squirrels had dug under a concrete slab and against the foundation. Nearby in a vacant lot, the rodents popped in and out of holes.

Ground squirrels near Pashone Grandson’s ground-level apartment dig holes near her door and eat her plants. One squirrel even got around her baby gate at the door and into her daughter’s clothes in her bedroom.

“It was a little scary. You don’t know what disease they carry. They’re dirty. I have a young daughter … I didn’t know if it was going to bite her,” Grandson said.

North of town, Minot Air Force Base, which houses bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles, has fought the ground squirrels for years. Earlier this month, the base said it had trapped more than 800 “dak-rats,” a base name for the rodents.

Base officials declined to comment on the squirrels.

Jared Edwards, facilities director for Minot Public Schools, which has three schools on the base, said residential areas of the base and runways are overrun by ground squirrels. He called it “a continuous battle for them for the last 75 years since the base has been there.”

“I’m not going to exaggerate: They’re by the millions out there,” Edwards said.

In town, three school properties have large populations of ground squirrels, he said. Last year, the school system began using snares, and for years before that had used poison.

“It’s something you have to keep up with. It is Mother Nature,” Edwards said, adding that they’ve probably been in the area since homesteaders came through.

A cute nuisance

Still, not everyone sees the squirrels as a pest. Some find the critters cute and fuzzy.

Herman said people have sabotaged, stolen or thrown out his traps. They occasionally confront him when he shoots at ground squirrels with an air rifle, scolding him for hurting the wildlife, he said.

“They get that cute association, and they are, you know, adorable, but they’re a vermin and a pest and dangerous when they are allowed to proliferate,” Herman said.