Last night I almost hit one. He had ventured into the street from his home in the trees. Huge oaks and maple trees and scads of pine trees all of which surround a massive golf course. Why would a squirrel want to venture onto the pavement from a Garden of Eden squirrel habitat?
I blasted my horn hoping to shake him up and send him back to safety. Did he even hear the horn? Does he not feel the cruel hard pavement and know that it is safer to stay in the woods?
What are you thinking you dumb shit squirrel, a little game of traffic daredevil?
It’s a rat with a bushy tail and a 2 volt brain. He probably can’t see/think 3 yards past his face. Next time do us all a favor and mush his diseased ass into the cruel hard pavement.
At risk of actually answering the question, I’d say it was to seek out either food, a mate, or territory. Only so many squirrels can live in so many square feet of space.
The thing that irritates me is that little trick they do, when they’re running across the street, and they’ve nearly cleared both tires, and then suddenly they double back and WHAM!, get clobbered. I suppose jinking works with owls and foxes, so why not try it with this other thing bearing down on you.
What I kind of wonder, along those lines… Some animals have different instinctive responses to different sorts of threat. Run from a fox, but hide from a hawk, or that sort of thing. But “big dangerous thing moving straight for you but which doesn’t actually care about you” isn’t unprecedented in the natural world, either. You’d think that some small critters would have evolved instincts to avoid getting trampled by bison, say, that would carry over to cars.
The sonsovbiches ate through the soffits of our house once and set up camp in our attic where they made a goddamned mess, shit, procreated, died and rotted. An exterminator told me that squirrels leave some kind of scent that tells their kin the area is okay to come into. So you get more fuggin bushy tailed rats. It was a while before we realized what had happened up there, so the damage was done. :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:!!!
After I fixed the soffits they tried to gnaw through it again. Now I was running around setting up traps trying to kill them, looking like Bill Murray to my neighbors.
I live in the city so shooting them was a no-no.
I’ve already ran a squirrel over with my Harley this year, and it’s only April. It’s looking to be a fine riding season!
I noticed in the parks in Chicago, at least, squirrels and birds too, seem to prefer paved walked. In Chicago a lot of the parks have winding paved paths and the birds and squirrels often use them.
Since the paths are winding they rarely go in a straight line, but the critters, follow them and one weird thing the squirrels do is lie FLAT spread out right on the paved paths.
I don’t know why they do that? Maybe they’re hot? But the squirrels and most birds prefer walking on the paths rather than run through the grass
There’s this one squirrel on my street that likes to play chicken with oncoming cars.
Squirrel: Look at me, I’m running into the street!
Me: slams on breaks
Squirrel: Oh, no, wait I’m not, I’m running the other direction.
Me: continues driving forward
Squirrel: Actually, no, I AM running into the street!
Me: slams on breaks
