That’s really cool, Sue!
And oh yeah there’s lots of magic in abnormally white critters… both good and bad.
In the old times when you’d see a white critter you were to “stamp” your palm and make a wish. You did this by licking your thumb and pressing it into the palm of your other hand. Children were allowed to stamp white mules, because they were not common. But there was no magic in mules for adults, it had to be a wild critter that was not usually white.
The good fortune to be had by stamping a white critter was expected to arrive at Christmastime or on a birthday.
White night critters were bad luck. Hounds-men when they treed a white coon at night, stamped their hands, made a wish asking for forgiveness for disturbing it, and gathered the dogs and went home for the night.
One of my uncles had a white bat that would fly around their house one summer, it worried him so much that he wouldn’t go out after dark and chance seeing it again. For years he would tell of all the bad luck he had that summer, multiple flat tires, his well pump got struck by lightning, pink eye in the cattle, his future ex-wife stuck around, and on and on.
Killing or harming a white critter would bring ruin to the family or death to the person who harmed it. When I was a kid we had a couple of white deer in our area. One was taken by a local logger during deer season who died within the year in a logging accident. The other was taken the next deer season and I can’t remember how, but that fella got dead too.
My grandad once saw a white squirrel in a big post oak, and that became the “lucky tree” where we’d touch the tree and make a wish. I think my cousins must have used up all the magic that squirrel left behind though, because I never had any of those wishes work out.
