I was attacked by a squirrel once. It bit my boot, I kicked it away and it charged. I shot it with a 20 gauge while it was charging leading to me being harassed by my hunting partner for years about being such a big tough dangerous game hunter that I took out a charging squirrel seconds before it tore out my throat. 

 

Squirrels can be carriers of rabies. So if one is charging you, I recommend killing it. I don't know why he was messing with pepper spray, I would have used the 9mm and when it was determined to be rabies free I would have had lunch.  

 

Oh boy! We are getting excited about pepper spraying small animals now?

 

Seriously, that video clearly shows that the squirrel has some type of serious problem. Normal squirrels run away from people. If a squirrel is coming right up to the officer like that then it is either diseased of it has been habituated to humans.

 

If the latter, then there would be no reason to call the cops in the first place. If the former, then sure, something has to be done about it. In view of the fact that it keeps on coming after the first couple of shots, I tend to think that the former is likely.

 

Look, that is one fucked up squirrel. If not pepper spray, then next option is a shot gun. Then there would not be much left of the squirrel to test for possible diseases.

 Exactly ! The squirrel was probably looking for food,from nice people. 

Seriously.

I have a friend where a squirrel has attempted to move into her house.  The squirrel (we now have evidence that the squirrel is a female since mating season has obviously started) found a way into the basement and was going to live there.  My friend coaxed her out into a squirrel house - yes, you can purchase such around here.  And basically, the squirrel is now an outside pet sort of like my friend's chickens.

You can have a gray squirrel as a pet.  My husband had one as a pet and it used a cat box.  Like a rabbit, your baseboards will be all chewed up, but otherwise, they can be as nice a pet as any other semi-wild same sized fuzzy critter.  We have had squirrels walk towards us when walking our dogs and only ran away when the dog got close enough to be a danger.  There was one at a rest stop off one of the interstate highways.  The squirrel was fat enough you couldn't see its feet when it sat up and begged.  It sat right on the sidewalk, not too close to the rest rooms so it wouldn't get stepped on but close enough to be easily seen.  And then it would sit up and hold out its paw to beg.  A lot of people fell for this trick.  Including my husband.

In the Pacific Northwest, rabies has been found in the bat population, and rarely is transmitted to raccoons, coyotes, pets and livestock.  A bigger danger from raccoons is round worm and leptospirosis (an intestinal disease).  Yes, since I grew up in Arizona, I know rabies is a larger issue in other parts of the country.  You can look up the documented incidences of rabies in your area here:

US: http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/location/usa/surveillance/wild_animals.html

World: http://www.cdc.gov/rabies/location/world/index.html

Note, many countries do not track or report rabies nor do they require regular vaccination. 

 

 

So unless you pet the squirrel then lick your fingers, you are probably safe.

 

You think my title is funny or, the video was funny?

 

 <moved from general conversation to irrationalities>

LOL, really? wtf? it's a animal in an unknown condition that's coming towards you.  As a city dweller, I would be startled, and the mace is not really as bad as kicking the damn thing.  I mean, that would have been inhumane.  He just sprayed the animal so it went away, I'm not sure what the problem is.  If he would have attempted to capture it somehow ( as with a box, it has been mentioned ) there's a slight probability that he could get bitten, and yet another slight probability that he could get rabies... and fucking DIE!  I for one would have steel toe kicked a charging squirrel out of panic.  

I remember you calling Brian a bleeding heart, lol... I wouldn't want to hurt anything anymore than necessary, but all you have seen is a 30 second video, you don't know the circumstances.  People pass judgment all too easily.

 

Actually I kind of lol'd when the cop started stepping backwards. I mean really? Giving up ground to a squirrel? But for those of you all panicked about using the mace- mace is considered the best non-violent way to protect yourself from wild animals and is generally carried by those who refuse to carry guns in the woods. It does not harm the animal in any permanent way. 

 

I imagine this thread would be very different if the squirrel HAD bitten one of the kids and there was a risk that the kid gets infected by a disease and the police officer had done nothing to prevent it. Granted, the risk of getting a disease from a squirrel is extremely small, but I don't think it is a city police officers job to know which animals are high risk of carrying disease and which aren't. It would be very sad if this (man? I mean really, giving ground to a squirrel...) lost his job or was suspended for his actions. While he might look incredibly stupid, he didn't do anything wrong. He shouldn't receive any repercussions other than being made fun of by the rest of the police force until he retires. 

I'm not a dork! *snort (adjusts pocket protector and taped thick glasses)

granted, but this is also not that bad, he just sprayed some mace... it sucks but as Beyond pointed out, it is not permanently harming the animal.  Meh, as I've said, you don't know all the details, 30 seconds of video out of context is really not enough to pass judgment.  I still wonder how far he could have kicked it... (that's a joke before the bleeding hearts start crying bloody fucking murder)

 

Let's review.  There have been NO documented cases of rabies in squirrels in the U.S.  Ever.  Not one.  You are safe from dieing from a squirrel bite - okay?  Put the pocket protector away, adjust those Buddy Holly glasses, lean down and tell the awful squirrel - SHOOOO!  And it will run away.  Sheese.

Really, you get a squirrel habituated to being fed peanuts and popcorn and so on and it is going to come up to people with its little paw out.  Not only is it not unusual, it is common and not a threat to you or your shoes or ankles.

 

 

 

One.

 

Now tell me how you can get one pellet into a squirrel. Or not. You would have to stand so far back that you would not have any assurance of getting any pellets into the damned diseased rodent in the first place. Then you would have to fire several times to stop it.

 

Never mind that fact, the officer did not have that much clearance and he had to deal with a bunch of kids yelling at him about how cute it was.

 

OK, I should not have to provide a CV on this but I will. I grew up in the woods and spent my summers at the local nature center. The year that I was 15, I spent the entire summer there volunteering so that I would have a job reference the following year. A big part of what I did was caring for sick animals, so I know what that officer was dealing with.

 

 

OK, I don't have that data at my fingertips. Even so, I choose to take it at face value. Let's step back and consider what was actually in the video.

 

I could not tell you if the squirrel had previously been habituated to human contact or not. I can tell you that it took a few hits of tear gas and kept coming at the officer. That is not a squirrel that is hoping for a few free peanuts. That is a diseased rodent.

 

Speaking of disease, I would hope that you are aware that there is at least one other disease on the planet besides rabies. I feel some slight inclination to give a pass to younger people who have only lived in cities. However, you have lived a a number of places for a long time.

 

You should know that wildlife is dangerous. Some of the diseases that they carry cannot be treated at all. Even the ones that can be treated can still be dangerous.

 

Let's talk about tularemia. If you get it, it is hard to diagnose as it requires non-standard growth medium and even then can be confused with other diseases. Assuming a correct diagnosis and early correct treatment, you are still at something like 10,000 times the risk of death as from properly treated strep throat.

 

If you do not get the right treatment early enough, then you are at about a 50% risk of death. :Let's compare that to some more well known diseases.

 

Ebola Zaire: No treatment and 80% of the infected will die.

 

Bubonic Plague: Caught in the first day or two the survival rate is, well, I did not find a useful number. However, if it gets past that, the odds are about 98% that you will die.

 

In fact, the USA and the USSR both kept stock of tularemia on hand as biological weapons because it is incapacitating and can trivially overwhelm any stock of antibiotics that may be on hand.

 

Now, I have no idea if the officer in that video knew that he was facing that specific risk but even so, he was clearly dealing with a diseased rodent.

I have new found respect for squirrels in light of all that information.

Growing up part of my life in the country I can't say how many venemous snakes I caught barehanded.

I still remember my mom screaming when I showed up at the house with two copperheads in a coke bottle.

A "dangerous" young squirrel is a lol for someone who knows a bit about wildlife.

Grrrr!!!

 

  I know that you're also a gun person so I really thought you were just being glib.  Now I see that you are just being a contrarian. 

   In Texas we hunt squirrel with shotguns.  If total obliteration of the game animal was as an unavoidable outcome what would be the point in shooting it ?  The squirrels are consumed by hunters as food.  Squirrels aren't exactly the kind of game that is sought after as trophy kills.

   Shot dispersal is a given with a shot gun. Ever heard of a choke tube ?  Hunters take that into account when they choose the ranges at which to take their shots. Some pellets always miss nevertheless enough make their way to the target to do the job of killing the game animal without destroying it. 

  Shotguns are used to kill wild ducks and geese, pheasants, turkeys, etc as well.   I have never seen any hunter who was stupid enough to try and get so close with his shotgun that he had nothing to show for his effort after he pulled the trigger.

  Even today high flying game fowl such as geese are now hunted with 12 gauges that chamber 3 1/2" magnums which is the ballistic equivilalent of a freaking ten gauge.  Somehow their hunting dogs always come back to their master carrying an entire bird carcass in their mouths ...not a few meager tissue samples.

 

                                                                       

 

  

 

      ps, the squirrel was not diseased.  It was treated by animal control and later released.  Not exactly the type of response one would expect from them if the squirrel were a seething cess pool of pathogens. 

        http://thescoopblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/04/mesquite-officer-stuns-young-s.html

 

There isn't much new, significant info coming out of Japan, save for one item;

Partial meltdown at fukushima

Otherwise, TEPCO is still weeks away from moderately safe resolution, radioactivity is still being dumped in the ocean, Japan changes energy policy for summer.

No, it doesn't take that much focus to read this thread and Japan's current events.

 

edit; did I say weeks? Looks like everyone's talking decades now...

I had similar thoughts when I saw this had been moved from General Discussion to Irrationalities. Thank you, you saved me a lot of typing.

 

Exactly. Not to say that every wild animal is harmless, just that if one has a basic respect for life in general - not just human - they will act in a responsible way when confronted with a wild animal. Humans don't own the planet and compared to all of the other species living here, we are certainly in the minority. I also feel that, as humans with supposedly superior intellect, we have the burden of responsibility to protect those other life forms.

AIG keeps repeating 'this animal was diseased' as though it were a fact. That information is not known.

I can see how the officer had the duty to protect himself and those near by from a potential threat.

What I have a problem with is his method.

This was a lesson for all those kids watching this event - what did they learn? To be afraid of Nature?

Hopefully, they learned that if you ever find an injured or orphaned baby animal, Do NOT call the police... call a wildlife rehabilitator instead.

Kids a very impressionable. How many of these kids will grow up with an unnatural fear of wildlife?

 

Given the possibilities, I guess we can be thankful the cop didn't shoot or, stomp the poor thing.

 

   The squirrel was not a disease carrier. It was examined by Animal Control and released back into the wild.   If it was positive for any health risk they could have easily stated as such.    Click the link that I provided in post# 30.

I was with cj in that it was probably just young and had possibly been fed by humans. It may have been looking for a handout and if so what a suprise.

On the bright side /cough if it was looking for a handout maybe now it wont be such a little panhandler ><

 

  Just a few years ago it was my job to use a track loader to clear away all the trees off of a 30 acre plot of land.  I raised the bucket about 5 feet above the ground to gain more leverage to push a dead  oak tree over.  When I pushed into the tree it just snapped off in front of the loader bucket.  I could see into the tree trunk and there were a few baby squirrels inside.  I just backed away and worked somewhere else for the rest of the day and hoped that mother squirrel would come and rescue her babies. 

 

  ( There's no freaking way I could have just driven over them )

 

Yeah, the story did specifically state that the animal was found to not be diseased (at least nothing obvious) and was released back into the wild. But personally, I still see no problem with the mace. Even if the animal is looking for a handout, it is good for it to learn not to approach people because animals that approach people are more likely to create problems. 

 

Calling animal control is ridiculous. What are they going to do? They capture the squirrel and they move it. Where to? There are schools everywhere, is there any reason to suspect that the squirrel isn't going to do the exact same thing again at a different school? Worse, whenever you move an animal to a new location, the odds of its survival drastically decrease. So the squirrel dies, but you don't have to see it, that is so much better... Or you don't move it far enough and it comes back to the same place. There was once a Black Bear in Minnesota that climbed up a tree in a public park. Animal control tranquilized it, moved it and the bear was back in the same tree the following week. So the whole exercise is futility.

 

Honestly, mace is probably one of the most humane ways to correct the squirrels behavior. It doesn't harm the squirrel but is irritating enough that the squirrel will probably avoid people from now on. Personally, I would have simply kicked it or swatted it with whatever I had handy. The way I see it, you have two options, do something to prevent the squirrel from approaching people or accept the fact that someday the squirrel might bite a kid. I don't really have a problem either way because I don't really care if a squirrel bites a kid, the kid will learn not to pet the squirrel. But simply relocating the squirrel isn't going to do anything other than change the venue of where the squirrel might bite some stupid kid.  

 

Well, there's another option: Give the poor starving baby squirrel some food. DUH!

 

Someone probably had been giving food and that is probably why it was being so aggressive in its approach. If you feed animals they will see you as a food source. So if your goal is to protect the kids from being bitten, feeding the squirrel has the opposite effect because the squirrel will become MORE likely to approach people and therefore potentially bite them. 

One of my friends works for the prison here just outside of town. Part of his training involved him getting sprayed in the face with pepper spray. He basicly walked in, got sprayed and went home. His face and eyes were red and he said it burned like hell. It's apparently bad enough that they paid him 8 hours for being at work for 30 minutes and that was standard practice. Spraying this stuff on a small animal probably did not make it feel good.