Squirrels feed at the bird feeder in our backyard. Today, a squirrel has been behaving strangely. He’s holding his head twisted to the right. When he moves, it’s often in circles, and he leans to the right and sometimes falls on his side. He found a big seed, and he laid down to eat it. He got up and down the tree about 8 feet, with much difficulty, but surely he’d be easy prey for the local cats and dogs.
My question is, should I pop him with a pellet rifle to keep a local pet (including my cat) from eating a sick squirrel’s meat? I don’t think the little fella is long for the world, and I have no intention of trying to rescue him. I don’t anticipate any happy options.
Call animal control, he could be rabid or have some other nasty contagious disease. At least the animal control officer is likely to know what to do with the poor thing.
I don’t have much to offer in the case of the squirrel. However, I think you should, as a precaution, clean your feeder with hot water and diluted vinegar. Rinse it out thouroughly. This on the outside chance that there is some kind of contamination / disease. I am sure you probably are doing this as a matter of routine. But I would go ahead and do it now if I were you.
I don’t know what to do with the sick squirrel. Other than… don’t try and pick it up. I am sure you wouldn’t do that. Maybe he does need to be “put down”. I don’t know. Sorry.
Sounds like a classic case of rabies behavior to me. Call your local animal control agency and let them handle it, DO NOT try to approach the animal yourself.
I called the city animal control agency. The fellow there said he was pretty sure it wasn’t rabies. He guessed parvovirus. He suggested calling the conservation officer, who was out for lunch. It’s Christmas Eve, so he’s probably out for the day. Meanwhile, the squirrel wandered off. The a.c. guy said the pellet rifle might be a good idea, but he was reluctant to give a firm opinion. No doubt visions of lawsuits were dancing in his head.
If the squirrel comes back, and if I kill him, I’ll be careful not to touch him. Using a plastic bag for a glove, then everting the bag to cover the corpse usually works for dead birds.
and people wonder about GWBush when he pops a firecracker into a bullfrogs mouth.
Look, watch the squirrel for a few days. It might be just drunk from too much eggnog or something. If it gets progressively worse, catch it in a box and take to the animal shelter. Use the pellet gun only if youre sure you can get a clean shot and an instant kill. I’m not worried about being humane altho that is a good concern. You dont want a mortally wounded sick animal scurrying off to die. That will bring about what you were worried about in the first place.
If you want to save the squirrel, do not call animal control
My daughter is a licensed wildlife rehabilitator. She works with squirrels all the time (I mean they get TONS of squirrels). She says take it to a wildlife resque and tell them it has head trauma.
Metalhead, I greatly respect the wildlife rehab folks around here. However, I don’t believe in rehab for critters with a big thriving population. The squirrel in my back yard was probably weak enough to get sick or slow enough to get bonked by a car. Saving him would not improve the breed, and it would be counter to the will of nature. Maybe that seems cold, but that’s the way I see it. I don’t scold my cat for preying on birds (and once a young bunny,) because weeding out the slow and the stupid is part of the flow of nature.
I recently saw a cartoon (Bizarro? Non Sequitur?) with a lion asking another lion, “Did you ever wonder what the fast ones taste like?”
I saw that thread as soon as I went back to the GQ message board! However, I looked for The Progressive web site and I haven’t found it yet. But I’m not done looking yet!
-Sandwriter
It’s 11:02pm on Christmas. We haven’t been watching the backyard all day, but we haven’t left home, either. We got about 7" of snow early this morning. There are no squirrel tracks in the snow. The furry creature in question has not come back. Perhaps he’s reading this now.
Hey! It could happen! Have you seen those tiny cell/keyboard things w/ a full qwerty keyboard? What??
I totally agree. Personally, I’m a hunter, and I think squirrels are tasty. It’s my daughter that’s the animal nut. I just didn’t read the op closely enough.
Squirrels are nothing more than rats with a bushy tail!
Letting them eat out of a bird feeder is unfair to the birds! Kill the furry bastard before he infects other animals with whatever disease he has. Use rubber gloves and a mask to place the carcass into a hefty bag. Seal the bag and place in a deposit box at your local PETA head quarters.
Well, they are dirty. They’re not kosher.
But…please! Do me and the world a favor: Kill and eat as many as you wish. Enjoy!
(then there will be less of them!;))
They’d prob advocate going out after all the filthy (but cute) animals with a shotgun. Isn’t there a KreuzfeldJacoblev variant that you can get from eating squirrel brains (BTW Yuk).
Come on, shooting wild life in some areas of the US might not be legal, Im pretty sure about that. Even ‘molesting’ a monarch butterfly in my city is like a $100 fine. I can’t imagine what they do to you if you shot one.
But this website is just too funny to not mention:
" It’s usually easy to get permission to hunt squirrels in my experience. If you run a squirrel up a tree it will try to put the tree between you and it. You can trick them buy tossing a rock to the brush on the other side and they will often circle back around to your side. Be ready! Sometimes you can wait them out when they run down their holes. Sit to the side of the opening and be very, very quiet. Make sure the wind isn’t blowing from you to the squirrel too. Let the squirrel come all the way out before shooting–wounded ones can often dart back in."
I don’t anticipate any happy options.
Sorry for the rant! But I hate 'em!