“Let’s see if anybody’s home here,” Michele Banks says as she tosses some peanuts against the trunk of a tree in Franklin Square. “Wakey wakey!”

       It’s a little after 11:30 on a recent morning. Cars and buses move up and down K Street NW. A few early diners have already fled their offices to find benches in the park to eat their bag lunches. Michele has brought lunch to the squirrels.

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       After a few moments, a whiskered head pokes out from a hole in the gnarled tree, then pulls back in. Soon a squirrel — a different one? — emerges, poses briefly on a branch, then scurries to the base of the tree to snatch a peanut. It scurries back up, then spins the legume in its paws like a mystic consulting a crystal ball.

       “That’s Van Gogh,” Michele says.

       Van Gogh?

       “He's missing most of one ear,” she says.

       So he is.

       Van Gogh. Fluffy Gray. Princess Byelochka. Gandalf the White. These are just a few of the District squirrels Michele — an artist who lives in Georgetown — has befriended (and named) over the past two years. Some were in Rose Park at 26th and P streets NW, some were in Georgetown, most were in Franklin Square, the downtown park that recently emerged from a complete transformation.

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       It is a handsome park, with fresh pathways, colorful flower beds and a children’s garden. Still to come is a cafe. The new Franklin Square is a lot cleaner looking than the old Franklin Square.

       But some things didn’t survive the $21 million makeover. For years, the park was home to albino squirrels.

       A white squirrel may not be as mystical as a white buffalo — as freighted with magic and portents — but there is something cool about seeing one. It’s even cooler to see two. Just before the renovations started, there were three albino squirrels in Franklin Square.

       Then the trees started coming down, removed by workers because they were diseased or in the way. More than half of the trees were felled.

       Trees are to squirrels what coral reefs are to clownfish. They can’t live without them. Oak trees have acorns: squirrel food. All trees have branches: the foundations for squirrel nests. And urban parks have humans, some of whom are careless with their lunches (more squirrel food).

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       When the pandemic started, Michele walked the city’s streets, stopping in parks, checking in with the squirrels, tossing them peanuts, taking their pictures. She started posting a “squirrel of the day” on her Twitter feed: @artologica. Among her favorite subjects was the squirrel she dubbed Fluffy Gray.

       Something about that squirrel’s posture — calm, resolute — reminded Michele of a politician. She made postcards that looked like a campaign poster touting Fluffy Gray for mayor.

       Michele happened to be at Franklin Square not long after a tree that seemed to be a favorite of an albino squirrel she called Gandalf the White was cut down. She snapped one photo of the squirrel in front of the tree’s severed trunk and another of Gandalf standing on the treads of an earth-moving machine.

       “That was kind of moving,” she said.

       A lot of people study squirrels in the wild. Some people study urban squirrels. No one seems to have studied the squirrels of Franklin Square, at least, not lately. The National Park Service told me they didn’t do a survey as to how the park’s animal population was affected by the renovation.

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       Franklin Square’s overseers were not always so uninterested in the park’s bushy-tailed denizens. In 1907, two concrete basins were installed in the northeast corner of the park for the express purpose of providing drinking water to the squirrels.

       In 1936, water to the park was cut off during construction of a decorative fountain. People complained on the squirrels’ behalf and, according to the Evening Star: “[Park officials] finally have decided to put cups of water in the park until the fountain water is turned on. That will be quite a long while and it probably will be the duty of some of the workmen to supply the squirrels with their daily water ration.”

       In September, the new Franklin Square opened. The mayor attended the dedication. Not in attendance: white squirrels. They hadn’t been seen for months.

       “At a certain point, they just disappeared,” Michele says. “It's sad.”

       Michele thinks the surviving Franklin Square squirrels — and there are plenty, both gray and black — must have the albinism gene in their gene pool. She hopes it’s just a matter of time before more white squirrels appear.

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       In the meantime, she says, “There's a white squirrel I just met down on the Mall. And I got a tip that there's one at Oak Hill Cemetery.” She’s seen another albino at the Spanish Steps in Kalorama.

       We’re over near the John Barry statue now, facing 14th Street. A pair of squirrels are looking expectedly at Michele as she reaches to the bottom of her paper bag.

       “There you go,” she says, tossing them peanuts, “there’s plenty for everyone.”