Squirrels are on the attack in New York City

By Reid McCarter  |  January 6, 2021 | 3:47pm
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Squirrels are on the attack in New York City
Photo: Alex Turton

As if the outside world wasn’t terrifying enough already, squirrels—the beady-eyed tree rats most of us just sort of ignore throughout our lives—have launched an offensive on the people of New York City.

According to a CBS report from last week, “people living in a Queens neighborhood” have been living through a chittering, bushy-tailed hell thanks to area squirrels’ decision to launch a series of unprovoked attacks as part of some unknowable rodent war campaign. The report describes a Queens resident named Micheline Frederick who was attacked by a squirrel “as she stood on the front stoop of her Rego Park home” last month.

“You hear someone has been bitten by a squirrel, you’re like ‘Okay, you got a little nib, what’s the deal?’” Frederick told CBS. “But this was … This was an MMA cage match! And I lost!” She and the squirrel “[wrestled] in the snow” until it eventually gave up and ran away, leaving her left hand bloodied.

Frederick isn’t alone. The article describes the experiences of Frederick’s neighbors, who were attacked by squirrels sitting on their mailboxes, climbing up their legs, or jumping onto their backs and biting them.

The good news is that the Centers For Disease Control “says small rodents like squirrels are almost never found to have rabies,” but the bad news is that this means nobody really knows why the Queens squirrels have started attacking people out of nowhere—why they’ve, uh, gone a little nuts.

For now, we can only recommend making a careful study of accounts describing the deranged New York squirrels in order to learn as much as you can about how to avoid the violent little freaks.

[via Boing Boing]

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