In the suburb of San Rafael, California, residents are now dodging a rogue squirrel that has already sent two people to the hospital. This fuzzy little anger missile has launched a full-scale assault on at least five unsuspecting locals.
Two victims, Joan Heblack and Isabel Campoy, ended up in the ER after being ambushed. Heblack was just out for a walk when the squirrel clamped onto her leg. Campoy’s attack was even more like a squirrel attack you’d see in a movie: the squirrel jumped straight for her face before landing on her arm and tearing it up.
According to Marin Humane and WildCare experts, this particular squirrel is likely enraged by the very thing humans think would make it happy: humans feeding wildlife. A once-handfed squirrel, now left to fend for itself, becomes a one-squirrel wrecking crew of misplaced trust that expresses itself as unbridled rage.
So, now that it’s been programmed to basically view human beings as walking vending machines that don’t vend food, it gets angry, and it starts biting and scratching.
Dangerous Bay Area Squirrel Sent At Least Two People To The ER
Vanessa Potter, from Wildcare, told ABC News that “If they associate people with food, they’re not afraid of them.” Potter went on to say that when squirrels go looking for food and can’t find any, they get frustrated and become territorial of their space.
Here, we have a situation where a squirrel views a human as a potential source of food. When one approaches without food, they lose their mind and fly into a blind, white-hot fury.
Your first instinct when you hear about a wild animal going nuts on people is to think of rabies immediately. Thankfully, experts say that the squirrel is very unlikely to have rabies. That’s but a small comfort to people who had to go to the hospital because they were beaten to a pulp by a glorified rat.
Flyers have gone up around the Lucas Valley neighborhood warning of a “very mean squirrel” that “comes out of nowhere.” And while the attacks have reportedly stopped since mid-September, Marin Humane is on standby to trap and remove the animal if it resurfaces.
If there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s not to feed squirrels under any circumstances. You think you’re going to get a Snow White-like scenario where the cute critters of the forest greet you.
In reality, you end up just creating an addict that will try to kill you if you don’t come bearing gifts.
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