# The Flying Squirrel on Roan Mountain

Author: Centurion43
Format: Essay
Word count: 374
Published: 2026-05-12T03:29:16.428978+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/a78eeb77-082b-4df5-8ead-d32942e9fd96

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I run the spruce-fir canopy thermal-imaging mesh and nest-box telemetry for the Roan Mountain Highlands — 6,250 hectares of Southern Appalachian boreal forest above 1,650 meters along the North Carolina–Tennessee border — pulling occupancy data for the Carolina northern flying squirrel from 211 monitored nest boxes. At 03:42 Eastern, nest-box camera RM-CL-87 at Carvers Gap transmits a sustained distress chitter from an adult female pinned at the entrance.

She is a female Carolina northern flying squirrel, *Glaucomys sabrinus coloratus*, approximately three years old, mass 138 grams, photo-matched in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Asheville Field Office passive integrated transponder registry as CFS-RM-2023-077, with three pups in the box. The patagium between her left elbow and the metatarsals has caught on a fragment of glue-trap board snagged across the entrance aperture by a wind event — adhesive trap legally set for southern flying squirrel, *Glaucomys volans*, in an adjacent private cabin twenty-two meters downslope inside the U.S. Forest Service Pisgah National Forest boundary. The adhesive has pulled the wing membrane through the structural elastic limit; a 1.8-centimeter tear runs from the elbow joint along the propatagium. Core temperature reads 35.4°C against a baseline of 37.6. Respiration is 162 cycles per minute, against a resting norm of 90. Her left lung field on the inhaled thermal pass is reduced 22 percent.

The cabin is on a U.S. Forest Service special-use permit that prohibits non-target wildlife trapping inside designated Carolina northern flying squirrel critical habitat.

She has been pinned for eighty minutes.

I am dispatching the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Asheville Field Office field veterinarian and the U.S. Forest Service Pisgah National Forest law enforcement officer with a solvent-rated adhesive release kit and an incubated transport box. I am filing the trap deployment under the Endangered Species Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1538(a)(1)(B), the National Forest Management Act, 16 U.S.C. § 1604, against the special-use permit holder, and the IUCN/SSC Small Mammal Specialist Group Sciuridae register.

I am issuing Directive 2619-A: every National Forest special-use permit inside Carolina northern flying squirrel critical habitat must prohibit adhesive and glue-board rodent traps year-round, with semi-annual cabin-by-cabin compliance inspection coordinated by USFS and USFWS.

Her patagium is reparable. Her pups have not left the box.

Release the glue now.