Yesterday my son and I were going thru the park on our way home.
We ususally see squirells(sp?), but this one was just reclining there.
Odd.
Then we squirted our water gun at him and he started coming toward us.
We took off.
Later, (we were quite close to home, not far from the park) and we saw a dead squirrel lying there.
I figured it was the same one; as it had been acting odd when we saw it earlier.
How unusual is it for a squirrel to just recline on the ground instead of busily acorning?
It could have just been a squirrel that was being hand fed a lot and was lazy, especially if it was coming at you all happy like, the way squirrels do. On the other hand, I’ve seen a lot of various animals act the same way as you described, in the mid to late stages of rabies. When squirrels attack, it’s best to run
[sub] Shoot Dad! He’s coming right at us!! [/sub]
With all due respect if you are old enough to have a child you should know better than to taunt animals behaving oddly (or allow your child to do so). In many cases they are sick or deranged if they are not exhibiting some degree of normal wariness. He’s lucky he didn’t get bit and rabies tests and treatment if necessary are no fun.
Rabies tests? No such thing, unless you’re dead (though that certainly wouldn’t be fun). And the shots these days aren’t bad at all–just regular shots, except for the fact that there’s about five of them over a two-month period or so, and the first one is immunoglobulin as well as the rabies shot (I had four shots the first day–one in each thigh and each arm).
Having said that, though, astro is absolutely correct–it wasn’t fun, and you should stay far from any animal acting strangely.
My brother once called a squirrel that didn’t run away to him in a park, “Heere squirrelly squirrelly”(or something of the like), to my brother’s surprise, it came up to him. My brother put his hand out and the squirrel bit him. My brother bit him back. The squirrel ran away. My brother quit calling squirrels.