At the turn of the twentieth century, fashion had already taken a heavy toll on the natural world. Birds had been slaughtered for their feathers, seals and otters hunted for their pelts, and foxes, minks, and beavers turned into signs of luxury.
Then, according to this 1902 editorial, the squirrel became the latest creature to fall under fashion’s cold eye.
The article treats the matter with a mix of sorrow and sharp sarcasm. If society could organize to save birds from ladies’ hats, why not spare the squirrel from ladies’ coats?
Passing of the Squirrel
Fashion has put its mark of approval on squirrel skins, and thus the seal of doom has been set on the squirrel, says the Chicago Tribune. Already it is said the visible supply of the little gray and red pelts in the United States has been exhausted and Europe is being called upon to supply the squirrel fur for the American market.
While there has been a struggle to save the birds from the maw of fashion, there never has been formed a society for the saving of squirrel skins, nor any other kind of skins for that matter, for the backs of their rightful owners.
The seal, the otter, the mink, and the beaver are going, the silver fox has gone, and now every trap in the land is to be set and every gun shotted that the squirrel may go the way of the rest.
For future generations, the time honored question of whether the hunter goes around the tree and the squirrel or the tree alone must needs be changed by the substitution of something else for the nimble squirrel, who knows enough to keep the bole of the tree between him and the man who is after his life.
The chatter so like the crackling of frosty boughs that came to us from the top of the tree will come to us no more. The woods will lose one of their chief attractions.
But what matters it, for must not my lady be kept warm? And if the seals are dead, why then there are the squirrels!
Source: The Midland Journal. Rising Sun, Md. December 5, 1902.
