It's not a horse of a different color that turned up in Pennsylvania recently, but rather a different mammal -- a squirrel. More precisely a purple squirrel.
The uniquely-colored rodent was trapped by Percy and Connie Emert, of Jersey Shore, Pa., who caught it in traps put out to keep squirrels from their bird feeders.
"We have bird feeders out in our yard, and the squirrels are constantly into them," Connie told AccuWeather.com. "My husband traps them and then sets them free elsewhere."
Connie had spotted a purple squirrel on her property but no one believed her.
"I kept telling my husband I saw a purple one out in the yard. 'Oh sure you did,' he kept telling me," she said.
But sure enough, when Percy checked the traps on a recent Sunday, there it was, in all its purple glory.
Nobody can explain the peculiar coloration, but theories abound.
AccuWeather.com meteorologist Henry Margusity ventures that "The squirrel could have been looking for somewhere warm and fallen into a port-a-potty or something similar."
Krish Pillai, a professor at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, thinks the cause may not be so benign.
"This is not good at all. That color looks very much like Tyrian purple. It is a natural organobromide compound seen in molluscs and rarely found in land animals. The squirrel [possibly] has too much bromide in its system."
No matter the reason, no harm came to the brightly colored squirrel. The Emerts released it back into the wild and currently nobody knows where the animal is. Hopefully, it will remain that way.
"We're not going to do a manhunt to look for the purple squirrel," Harold Cole, wildlife conservation officer for the Pennsylvania Game Commission said.











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