What diseases do pet squirrels carry?
While it's a well-known fact that squirrels carry rabies and
rodent plague, by far the most DANGEROUS thing they do is to carry
Lyme positive ticks into your yard, to be carried into your house
by your pets. You too, can pick up these ticks when you handle
plants where the ticks have crawled off of the squirrels.
Squirrels can be cute to admire from a distance, but it is now
unwise to do anything to encourage them to visit your yard,
unfortunately. Lyme is not in our radar because we didn't always
have spirochetes in the ticks. That's a different story. It's said
to have begun in a Plum Island lab off the coast of Old Lyme,
Connecticut.
Squirrels are subject to rabies but they do not commonly carry
rabies, and if you live in the city its highly unlikely that the
squirrels have rabies because they aren't exposed to animals that
do carry such as raccoons.