the tindog coffeehouse

Wow. The Squirrel Liberation Front has been busy this week.

First, a battle in Milwaukee between a relentless gray squirrel and a homeowner determined to defend his attic at all costs. You can probably guess who’s winning.

“Normally when you see a squirrel, it’s just a squirrel. But now it’s like I know him. He’s a very worthy adversary,” Dave said when I embedded with his forces this week. …

“Our house has lost $15K in value with the sheet metal, six holes in the side of the house, roofing being torn out, a radio with 24-hour sports talk being blared out the back window (yesterday it was Rush). And now we have a fake owl outside the window in an effort to scare him. Oh, we also have a spotlight to prevent him from chewing.”

That’s not Rush as in “Today’s Tom Sawyer, mean, mean pride.” It’s Limbaugh, who’s been known to actually attract rodents.

The squirrel has chewed holes right through the eaves to get into the attic. When Dave would nail sheet metal over one hole, the squirrel would gnaw another. This required him/her to hang upside-down from the rain gutter, which it’s also been eating.

Continue reading…

While aggressive black “super squirrels” in the UK are busy extinguishing their inferior grey and red brethren in preparation for the ultimate showdown with mankind, it appears that squirrels in France are busy, well, being French.

Previously:
Squirrel Uprising 2: The Revenge
Squirrel Uprising: Rise of the black ‘super squirrel’

Well, it looks like the global squirrel revolution may have hit a snag, albeit only a temporary one. It seems the different factions of the Squirrel Liberation Front are turning on each other in the UK, with the more aggressive black “super squirrels” overtaking their grey counterparts (who themselves are in the process of decimating the reds).

The testosterone-fuelled black squirrels are faster, fitter, fiercely territorial and more aggressive, beating greys to food and mates.

It is a subgroup of the same species of squirrel as greys but in some areas has already become the dominant variety. …

Dr Thomas said the first black squirrel was sighted on the outskirts of Letchworth, Hertfordshire in 1912. The latest estimates show there could be as many as 25,000 black squirrels in the East of England.

This is the biggest change in squirrel demographics since the last indigenous red squirrels almost disappeared 50 years ago as a result of the population explosion of the bigger and more aggressive greys.

With the friendlier varieties quickly becoming obsolete, it’s only a matter of time before the angry nut-hoarding rodents turn their attention back on us. Yes, we should be afraid. Very afraid.

Previously:
Squirrel Uprising 2: The Revenge

I used to have a different blog a couple of years ago, and there was a running joke about how squirrels were plotting to take over the world.

Well, maybe it’s not a joke:

A squirrel ignited a fiery chain reaction that led to a power line collapse, car fire, natural gas fire and a power outage in northwest Spokane Wednesday morning.

It all started at 8:22 a.m. in the 4900 block of North Hartley at Wellesley when, according to Avista investigators, a squirrel came in contact with a transformer. That single action set in motion a chain of events.

First, the power line burned through causing the line to fall to the ground and come into contact with a metal fence and a car. The car caught on fire.

The fence, meanwhile, was energized by the fallen power line and the electricity was conducted underground to a natural gas pipeline which in turn burned through and started an underground natural gas fire which burned up to two gas meters at nearby houses.

The Squirrel Liberation Front strikes again!