Look what I caught this morning sleeping in a tree! 
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to take a closer pic cause I was already in the neighbor’s yard 
but it was still adorable to see. I also spotted tracks in the snow leading up to its spot.
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So what is it?
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Looks like a melanistic fox squirrel.
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It’s not the best pic but it’s just a black squirrel
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Thanks. Squirrels are not something I would ever see in my part of the world, and I didn’t know there were black ones.
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Melanistic grey squirrel. Widespread in many areas. There are white ones, too! Not albinos. Leucistic.
https://www.ffa.org/ffa-in-the-usa/where-are-the-white-squirrels
https://blog.nature.org/2021/10/11/whats-up-with-white-squirrels-and-black-squirrels/
https://whitesquirrelinstitute.org/white-squirrel-research-institute/what-is-a-white-squirrel
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Both gray and fox can be melanistic. In fact, I read that the specific gene that causes melanism in gray squirrels actually originated in fox squirrels, proving cross breeding in the recent-ish past. I’ll see if I can find the paper… Here we go!
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6625063/
Supposedly melanistic individuals were more common before Europeans arrived, and then they became easier to find/hunt. They are more common the further north you go into Canada. Here in northern Ohio, they seem to be more and more common every year, as fewer people are hunting squirrels now.
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Our town has a lot of black squirrels but I haven’t really seen them anywhere else either 
not my photo! This belongs to my friend who does not use inat, but I think this photo is too cute not to share!
This is an eastern screech owl who fell asleep my friends yard!
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That is an awesome picture and the owl looks like it could blend in a tree with its bark-colored feathers 
it
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btw, there’s an observation field “sleeping”:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?verifiable=any&place_id=any&field:sleeping
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I added some links to my response, in case anyone wants to go down a rabbithole (go down a squirrelhole?) reading about white squirrels
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https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/324188736
This is my favorite one I’ve caught sleeping. One of my favorite observations period.