Strange wild squirrel 🐿️

We are all used to seeing red squirrels in summer and gray squirrels in winter. Depending on the time of year, they change their coat. But one day in August, in the summer, I met such a squirrel in the distant reaches of the forest.

Look, she has both gray and red colors. It's too late to be a gray winter coat, and too early to change it to a winter one.

It could be melanism, it could be some kind of hybrid between an common red squirrel and another. Namely: Black Caucasian squirrel, Far Eastern black squirrel, Altai black squirrel, maybe there are some other species and subspecies.