More than just your bird feeder is at risk

A couple of squirrels gained some notoriety on both sides of the pond recently.
Last month in St Louis, a squirrel got a huge amount of media coverage for interfering with baseball games - we'll just let a link to the animal's Wikipedia entry stand for all of it, describing its subsequent celebrity in song, on T-shirts and Twitter, etc.

At about the same time, TV viewers in Britain were shocked when they were watching a nice, family-friendly baking contest, and were treated to a clip of some nature footage - which included a a squirrel flasher:

For those who were fortunate enough to miss this offense on the broadcast, it was still hard to avoid, because again the hooligan got all kinds of press.

Squirrels commonly interfere with more important things than entertainment. It was no effort at all to find enough stories of squirrels causing power failures to link every highlighted word in this sentence to a different incident.

And while the magazine cover illustration above may seem extreme, squirrels do attack people. One ran amuck in a town in Vermont earlier this year, and if you read the book, you'll find several cases of them attacking innocent children, sometimes in their own classrooms and playgrounds.

They also cause car accidents when do-gooders swerve to avoid them. In California, the result of one such incident was rather spectacular when the driver hit a fire hydrant instead:



And yet some people even take these animals into their homes. A couple in Cornwall rescued a gray squirrel that had been attacked by a cat and nursed it back to health. They don't seem to realize that this can only end badly, despite the obvious evidence in the animal's addiction to Crunchy Nut Corn Flakes: "If she doesn’t get them she goes berserk and will run around the room jumping on my shoulder until she gets a bowl."

Not all squirrels wait for an invitation into your home, and one man in Sweden found that authorities not only didn't help, they stood in the way of his self-defense. A squirrel repeatedly broke in to his house and trashed the place, but it took two months for local government to decide it would be OK for him to attempt to shoot it - after he also gets permission from the police.

Don't forget that any gray squirrel in Britain is badly behaved almost by definition, since they're an invasive species that's driving the smaller, cuter red squirrel to extinction; grey squirrels now reportedly outnumber the native reds by 70 to one.

But in one part of Britain, they've got the right idea what to do about the invasion of grey squirrels, joining a trend we've seen before: They're eating them.

A company in Cornwall is using them in the filling for Cornish pasties, the traditional local meat pie. The owner points out that squirrel meat is environmentally friendly and, of course, free range: 'At a time when people are looking closely at food miles and ethics, grey squirrel is the ultimate in environmentally sustainable meat.'

But they don't attempt to hide the element of revenge: All profits from the sale of the meat will be donated to the Red Squirrel Survival Trust.

Three Bad-Animal Weekend

For the holiday, a few quick headlines, posted in-between Blogger outages:

Mutant turtles terrorize London ponds

California family finds mountain lion in garage

Nazi scientists tried to create an army of talking dogs


Also, it's a good time to make sure you didn't miss the classic post about squirrels behaving badly on Memorial Day.

Photo of poster publicizing fearsome Maryland relative of those London terrapins by Flickr user clearly ambiguous.

And now, on top of everything else, a rampaging rodent

The world is full of frightening news right now. Still, most of it doesn't have an immediate effect on the majority of us. But out of Bennington, VT, comes a story of a risk that's much closer to home:

An East Street man said he was minding his own business and shoveling snow away from the side of his house when he was attacked.

"All of a sudden I felt something on my back and shoulders, scratching," said Kevin McDonald, of 15 East St.

It was a gray squirrel, said McDonald. He threw the animal off, but twice it jumped back onto his arms, delivering more scratches. Finally, it ran up a tree and McDonald retreated to his house.

The victim was relieved when he found out that since he hadn't been bitten, he wasn't at risk for rabies. (In fact, a Vermont public health vet tells the AP that there's never been a case of a squirrel transmitting rabies to a human.)

So he thought nothing of it till the next day:

when his wife reported hearing yelling from across the street. He said he looked to see his neighbor with a blanket and a metal pole battling a gray squirrel not unlike the one that attacked him the day before. Later, he would learn that a woman on the same street had also been attacked.

The local game warden seems to deny responsibility for solving this problem, saying there's not much he can do unless a victim can corral the perpetrator. And the reporter who wrote the original article is a bit bemused that this story has gotten worldwide coverage, especially now.

But the widespread interest makes perfect sense to this blog. Only some of us live near a nuclear meltdown or United Nations airstrikes. But cute furry rodents? Take a look out your window - and watch your back.



Thanks for the tip to reader LD. And if you see a squirrel that looks like that photo by Flickr user practicalowl, it's TOO CLOSE.

Small dangers

Some animals are so cute and little, you may think, how much trouble can they be? Here are some stories to remind you not to let down your guard in the new year.

-There goes the neighborhood:

England is stereotypically the sort of place where it's hard to be truly accepted into society if you weren't born there. The same seems to be true for animals. Rabbits were introduced a couple thousand years ago by the Romans, but they're still considered a non-native invasive species.

But maybe there'd be less prejudice against them if they were better citizens. A recent study says that in Britain, these zillionth-generation immigrants cost the economy more than £260m a year including damage to crops, businesses and infrastructure.

The Romans may not have realized what they were doing, but we didn't learn from their mistake. Humans can't seem to resist inviting adorable guests who end up overstaying their welcome. Gray squirrels were fashionable pets for the rich Englishpersons in the 19th century, an import from North America, but like all these trendy pets, people eventually get bored of them. A couple were released in 1876 and now their descendents cause £14m in damage and are driving the native, and cuter, red squirrel to extinction.

The 19th century British also repeated the Romans's error more exactly by introducing the rabbit to Australia, where it's gone on to devastate the native ecosystem. They also do another kind of damage there that is much more surprising:

Aviation wildlife strike statistics released by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau show rabbits and hares accounted for 82 of the 257 reported plane collisions with animals between 2002 and 2009 - the highest for any non-winged creature.

The bureau said animal strikes were relatively rare but when they did occur they could result in severe damage.

-Think of the children:

And speaking of squirrels: why do we let these sex maniacs run around on the streets where innocent children can see them? The females of those cute red squirrels, for instance, will mate with a dozen males a day if they can, and they don't care if they're relatives - doing it with their own fathers or brothers is OK with them.

A recent study tried to figure out the reason for this behavior. Did it evolve because it helped their reproductive success? Nope, scientists concluded: females will mate with as many males as they can for no reason except "because they're there."


-Second-hand smoke:

Even this blog has to admit that rats make excellent pets. They're personable and intelligent, and if you're easily bored, don't worry - they don't live too long.

But as with any pet, training is important: as one woman in England found after a fire in her apartment:

When Nelly Banks saw her rat’s cage burst into flames, she never expected to see her beloved pet again.

But she got quite a shock when the rascal rodent ran around on the floor – after sparking a full scale 999 alert.

Nelly’s pet – called No Name – stole a smouldering cigarette butt from her ashtray and took it to bed with him.

But the cigarette continued to smoulder, set fire to her cage and left her entire flat on Westminster Road, Morecambe, smoke-logged.

The 43-year-old has no idea how the rat made the miracle escape. She said: “He is a little pincher, he is always taking stuff and hiding it and this time he took one of my cigarettes and put it into his cage which is obviously flammable.

“He had beer cans and bits of paper and all sorts in there, so it did not take much to send it up."

So don't forget: if you're going to allow cute little furry animals into your home, teach them not to smoke in bed.



Cover of a classic horror story by Flickr user snigl3t.

I am not alone

There is nothing I could add that would surpass the heading on this story at the Christian Science Monitor:

Monkeys hate flying squirrels, report monkey-annoyance experts

Japanese macaques will completely flip out when presented with flying squirrels, a new study in monkey-antagonism has found. The research could pave the way for advanced methods of enraging monkeys.

Sometimes it's so lonely at this blog. It's good to know that there are both scientists and journalists out there who are on our side when it comes to keeping animals in their place.



Photo of Nutzy, mascot of the Richmond Flying Squirrels, by Flickr user John Murden.

Amnesty for illegal aliens?

We've come a long way since the days when people would purposely introduce species to a new country. The havoc wrought by the cane toad has taught us a lesson, as well as the effects of accidental tourists like the brown tree snake.

Efforts to eradicate invaders are costly and not often successful, and the Times reports that scientists in England have suggested that in some cases, we just give up: some species are so established that they should be granted "ecological citizenship."

It's clear that these scientists have no problem with rewarding bad behavior with the privileges of citizenship:

The grey squirrel would probably be among the candidates for such a reassessment.

Introduced to Britain in 1828, it has spread across most of the country, driving out the smaller red squirrel and possibly damaging wild bird populations by eating their eggs.

They note that some species have already benefited from a sort of de facto policy of this sort:

Some invaders are already ecological citizens. One such is the brown hare, which was introduced to Britain by the Romans but which is so widely accepted that its recent decline has prompted government to list it as an endangered species.

Similarly, rabbits, brought to Britain in the 11th century and now responsible for £115m of losses to farmers each year, are also seen as British.

Finally, they even call for politically correct language to describe the invaders:

Objecting to such terms as “American tree-rats” to describe grey squirrels, they said: “Terms like ‘alien species’ can risk jingoistic or moralistic stances.”

They suggest that researchers should instead use such neutral terms as “non-native”.

I leave it for you to decide: Is this any way to teach bad animals a lesson?



Squirrel in your face by Flickr user satosphere.

Hail to Heroic Humans

So many of the humans in the stories reported in this blog just don't get it. Again and again, we've seen people make excuses for animals or, worse, even enable them.

So it's a pleasure to recognize a couple of true role models in the fight against bad animal behavior.

In the first case, a squirrel was put in its place when it was banned from riding a rollercoaster in England.

Workers noticed it riding the revamped Sonic Spinball roller coaster as it was tested in the mornings and joining visitors who were offered an early go on it before the official opening.

The grey-haired animal was also caught stealing food from the workers.

A spokesman for the Staffordshire theme park said: "It was getting in the way of builders who were painting. They couldn't carry on because they would end up with paw prints in the paint."

Alarms were installed that emit a warning noise inaudible to human ears but designed to ensure the squirrel, nicknamed Sonic, avoids the ride in future.

I'm sure we can all agree that that's the sort of thing we want to see more of. But even more impressive is the case of a woman who was attacked by a shark while snorkling and escaped by punching it.

"I thought 'this shark's not going to get the better of me' and I started punching it on the nose, punching, punching, punching," she told local media.

"And then it got me under the water, but not much because I started kicking at its neck."

She lost quite a lot of blood and is going to have to undergo a number of surgeries, but the woman sees a bright side. Apparently there are unanticipated rewards for those who stand up to bad animals:

"I have to have a new remodelled bottom, so that's a positive," she said.

Photo of that stinking scofflaw squirrel from The Mail.

Squirrel disrespects American flag, fallen soldiers

A cemetery in Michigan followed its usual tradition this year, of putting small flags in the graves of almost a thousand dead soldiers for Memorial Day.

But the next day, cemetery staff found that many of the flags were gone, ripped off leaving nothing but bare sticks behind.

The mystery was solved by the supervisor of the cemetry - obviously an observant fellow but not a reader of this blog, because he found it hard to believe that an innocent wild animal could be the culprit:

If he didn't see it happen, Ron Ceglarek said he probably wouldn't believe it.

A squirrel -- weighing about 3 pounds -- got up on its hind legs, tore a small American flag from a small staff next to a grave stone, rolled it up and carried it up a tree to a waiting mate building a nest.

It happened not just once, but about dozen times.

"He plucks them right off," Ceglarek, superintendent of Mount Hope Cemetery in Port Huron, said of a rogue squirrel that is stealing flags. "If I didn't see it, and I didn't follow the squirrel, I never would have believed it."

Full story and pictures here.

Squirrel looking deceptively noble by Flickr user threefingers.

Animal espionage dogs Iranians

The news business has fallen on hard times. How can you doubt it when you can't find any followup to this story from 2007:

Iranian Police Smash Squirrel Spy Ring

SKY NEWS UK Thursday July 12, 2007
Police in Iran are reported to have taken 14 squirrels into custody - because they are suspected of spying.

The rodents were found near the Iranian border allegedly equipped with eavesdropping devices.

The reports have come from the official Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).

The IRNA said that the squirrels were kitted out by foreign intelligence services - but they were captured two weeks ago by police officers.

A Foreign Office source told Sky News: "The story is nuts."

Of course the Foreign office would deny it, but outside experts were also dubious about the accusations against the squirrels. When asked by NPR about the possibility of training squirrels to be spies, professor John Koprowski, co-author of North American Tree Squirrels, suggested that it would be difficult to "channel their elusiveness" into "constructive activity" in the field.

Still, clearly there were squirrels lurking suspiciously near the border - and their fate seems to be unknown. But that hasn't stopped other species from getting into the game, since Iran also arrested some spying pigeons near a nuclear facility in 2008.

Asked to comment on the pigeon story, one diplomat told Sky News, "It's clear there has been some sort of coo in Tehran."

Perhaps there's a bright side to all the sneaky bad behavior on the part of animals in the Middle East. With all the zoos downsizing due to the state of the economy, maybe some of those unemployed keepers can get work as prison staff in Iran.

Squirrel by, once again, the excellent Misterqueue.