Mr. Pug and I were driving on a country road near dusk last night, and in front of us by about 50 yards a convertible was also driving along. A hawk flew up from the left-hand brushy shoulder of the road and almost collided with the convertible. It swerved upward in a panic, and dropped the squirrel it was carrying - scoring a perfect bullseye into the open car!
We were just far enough behind that we couldn’t detect if the driver noticed, so we followed the car for a mile or so until it pulled into a country biker bar parking lot. We got out and approached the driver and asked if she saw it. She said yes and pointed to the bloody body of a fat ground squirrel smack between the two car seats. She had pulled into the parking lot to see if someone would fish it out for her as she couldn’t bear to touch it. All the drunks from the bar thought that the woman from the red convertible was fresh meat arriving and it took some excited explanations and pointing out of the body to get them to comprehend the real situation. They finally blurrily understood and one guy, more daring than the rest, picked it out and threw it away.
What a one-in-a-million happening! Wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.
I spent a summer working on the grounds crew at a posh country club in Virginia. The members were rascist fools, the lot of them.
The women were only allowed to play on certain days of the week, and they were nastier than their husbands.
I was driving a tractor pulling a load of gang mowers (circulating blades that are used to mow the rough) and was slowing as some ladies were approaching the green to putt. Out of nowhere, a squirrel being chased by another squirrel raced down from a tree and right behind me. Needless to say, they didn’t fare well. A downpour of sliced rodent entrails rained down on the green and the ladies, which, despite my strong self-control, caused me to burst into hysterical laughter.
Another squirrel story: I was walking to work one day and right in front of me falling from the sky is a tailless squirrel. I look at it totally dumbfounded as it crawls off to die. I look up into the tree and there is a cat with the tail in its mouth. The cat lets go and the tail falls to earth.
That’s nothing. Yesterday at Wal-Mart (in Wisconsin) I saw a large and confused deer thundering through the busy parking lot. It hit two parked cars before escaping.
“Your attention, please. Will the owner of a blue Ford Windstar please go to the parking lot. You car has been punctured by an 8-point buck.”
I knew a guy who had squirrels who would jump to a bird feeder of his, hit it, and fall to the ground and then eat the bird seed that had fallen.
So, he decided to put a trash can under where they fell either to freak them out, or carry them out into the woods (I’m not really sure what he was going to do).
Anyway, a couple of rains had put some water in the trash can, and he came home one day to find like 5 drowned squirrels in his trash can. He felt really bad.
My brother-in-law was riding his bike and a squirrel ran right into his spokes, spun around like a…like a…squirrel in the spokes, and was thrown out at a high rate of speed, to his death.
A few years ago we were walking to one of the waterslides at Lake Lanier. It was in a wooded area, and we looked up to see a deer come running through the woods, and jump onto the waterslide. He lost his balance and flailed around for a bit (we could see fee in the air, waving about), and but was finally able to get back up. It leaped out of the slide and ran away.
That’s what you get for breaking in line like that, I guess.
The squirrel in the convertible story was cool though.
“Good thing it warn’t no live rattlesnake what got dropped in your car!”
And I bet that hawk is still hunting that stretch of road for its dropped squirrel.
A friend of mine claimed that the same thing happened with a bird. I didn’t believe him until I saw the “evidence” for myself, splattered all over his bike.
Deer are a fairly serious road hazard around here. One morning I was driving to work. It was winter, and dark, and there was a thick fog. I was travelling not too fast when I came into a fog bank that I passed through quickly (it was narrow). Emerging on the other side I found myself bearing down on a whole herd of deer, just standing in the road. I hit the brakes and discovered that the road was icier than I had thought it was. As I came skidding into the herd, at about thirty-five miles per hour, they all turned to watch me approach with completely blank, vacuous expressions. They didn’t move at all; they just watched. I managed to wring enough control out of the car to very nearly miss all the deer as I careened through the zombie-like herd. There was one I simply could not miss. When I was within about five or ten feet of her, she nonchalantly stepped out of the way, so that my front-right quarter panel merely bumped her and pushed her hind quarters out of the way. As I exited the herd, I looked in my rear-view mirror. It was dark and hard to see; but, it appeared as though they were all just standing there, staring at me as though I were an otherworldly apparition that had just passed through their midst (sp?). It may have been my imagination, but one or two may have been sporting a Mona-Lisa Smile.
It was surreal. It was as though I had passed through a herd of Galopagos Deer who were totally indifferent to humanity and its customs.
The squirrel bombing is pretty hilarious. Well, not for the squirrel.
Not a squirrel story but a hawk story. Not as impressive as Pug’s but here it is:
We were all sitting at a table in my sister’s front yard chatting one day. A bunch of sparrows were chirping away in a hawthorn tree not 5 feet from me when all of a sudden their chirps turned into cries of terror. We looked up about ten feet to see a small hawk had dived straight down into the tree and now had a sparrow in its clutches. We watched it hop from one branch to another as its victim vainly struggled before it flew off with it down the street. It was an awesome if sad sight. You would have thought sparrows would have been safe from hawks when they were that close to humans. Maybe they thought so too.
You’re all missing the vital point here: this was no random accident! That hawk and squirrel were clearly nature terrorists, and their nefarious scheme of taking control of a high-powered auto to wreak havoc on humans was clearly narrowly averted by misadventure. Whether it was merely a training accident or a “live” mission gone wrong, we may never know…
I just hope that someone informs Highway Watch. This is exactly the sort of thing they’ve been looking for.
Keep watching the skies, citizens! Just hope to God they don’t start deploying airborne skunks.
One morning some years ago, whilst waiting for the bus to come and take me to middle school, a guy who lived near the stop came out and waved at me. I waved back. He put his palms against his mouth and “farted” loudly. At that exact moment, a squirrel fell out of a tree, landed at the guy’s feet, layed there stunned for a few seconds, then jumped up and scampered back up the tree.
