And I suppose squirrels think this is funny.

It's the squirrel equivalent of slapping a slow-moving car with your fist as it goes past and then screaming. Squirrels are sick, sick little critters...

The squirrels in our back yard have been doing this... I even tried to get a pic of it last night! They're prostrating themselves, arms and legs akimbo, flatter'n a pancake. Ol' Boy says it's to get their bellies close to the cool(er) ground. Although, in a parking lot, I can't imagine the ground being 'cooler'.

I'll see if any of those pics are clear enough to post... brb.

ETA: Of course not. There's one shot that's semi-clear, but it just looks like a squirrel in the grass.

A squirrel got into my garage a while back, and the critter was anything but dormant. Lil' sucker went nuts, knocking things off the shelves, climbing up and down the walls, jumping from one rafter to another and screeching to high heaven all the while.

My wife learned just how brave I am when I refused to shoo the squirrel back out into the wild.

She said, "Just grab a broom and lead him outside."

"I'm not going out there."

"Why not?"

"Listen to him. He's going nuts. I wouldn't go out there with a shotgun, let alone a broom."

Meanwhile, more terrifying sounds issued from the garage. My wife tried to open the door. I grabbed her wrist.

"Don't do that! He might get into the house!"

I stood before the door with my arms and legs spread, blocking her from going into the garage.

She said, "You're really something, you know that?"

I made believe she understood the peril I had saved us from and ignored what she whispered under her breath.

To my great relief, several hours later, the squirrel found its way out. It left behind a huge mess, which I was only too happy to clean up considering what other awful fates I could've endured.

When I was in high school, living in Eufaula, OK, America, a squirrel managed to get into my bedroom by coming down an old duct in the closet. I awoke to the sounds of his running wild (just as SK described) and screaming maddly in his frantic trip around and around the walls of my room.

It was about 4am... and my dad was up. (Early to bed, early to rise... yeah, that was Sid.) He was up playing solitaire at the kitchen table - right outside my room.

So... what'd I do? I hollered for my daddy!

"Daddy! There's something in my room! I think it's a rat!"

So... what'd Daddy do?

He opened the bedroom door and let my huge tomcat in with us! I thought we were all dead. But you know what that cat did? He walked - yes, he walked - that squirrel out of my bedroom, through the kitchen, and out through the screen porch to the screen door Dad had thoughtfully opened for the rodent's escape.

If we hadn't seen it with our own eyes, I'd never have believed it. (Sid was good at telling tall tales... maybe that's where I got my talent at fiction... hmmm...)

I'm betting that cat was saying, "Come with me... I'll get you outta here. These humans are nuts, I tell ya."

Our back deck had wire fencing around it at one point, and it has a wire gate. One day over the winter, a squirrel climbed up on it in an attempt to get to the bird feeder -and forgot how to get back off. He spent a good ten minutes running around, getting more and more frantic, running for the gate, bouncing off the wire, trying the other side, seeing the gate again and forgetting he'd already tried that and bouncing off it yet again. I was pretty literally on the floor laughing - even more so when my mom hollered up from downstairs, "What IS that on the porch? It sounds like a herd of elephants!"

How they can be so stupid and yet so inventive finding ways to get into a birdfeeder, I'll never know...

You think squirrels are sick little buggers try raccoons. Where we live there is a plethera of them. Last summer we sat up one night (not by choice) listening to this thumping coming from a neighbours place. We found it odd that they would be getting up and making all sorts of banging noise at weird and late hours (we're talking 12 AM...2:30 AM...3:45AM), but since they were friends of the family we didn't bother saying anything. The next morning we see them outside and learn that they had a raccoon the kept coming inside all night long. They would chase it out, lay back down and 15 minutes later the little bastard would be back inside and the fun would start all over again. Believe me, I would take a squirrel over a raccoon any day, but my preference is to have neither

Jo, what you didn't see were the tiny hidden squirrel cameras. I bet you're a star on their, "When Humans Freak Out" program.

Lucky you didn't get too close there, Jo. A friend of mine once told me about the time he was out for the day with his grandparents, and they saw what looked like a dead or injured squirrel in the road. His Nan got out to see if it was alright. Little bugger didn't move until she got her hand right up to it, at which point it leapt up, mauled her a little, and then scampered off.

Squirrels are the devil's rodent. Just because they have more fashion sense than rats, doesn't make them any better.

Only once did a squirrel get into my house despite two labs who were suppose to be guarding it. I came home and realized I must have left the screen door open a crack and there was this squirrel happily eating sunflower seeds out of the bag. The dogs didn't seem to care and I was quite happy the critter was cleaning up his mess as he went along. He was kind enough to drop the empty shells back into the bag instead of all over the kitchen floor. A clean squirrel is a happy squirrel!

Oh, yeah. Squirrels are sadistic. It's all that inbreeding.

I have a pet field mouse. My cat caught it on New Years Eve, and instead of letting it outside to die from its assault wounds or procreate, I put it in my deceased fancy mouse's cage. It's doing well.

I never pet it, because it's wild, but the cats and I like to watch it. It has big ears, which I think are cute. It also likes strawberries.

In London we used to call them "rats". Of course they were rats dressed up to look like squirrels until you got closer.

Had another one (or maybe the same one) discover last year that it's not a good idea to mess with a big prickly cactus someone (like me) has put out on the porch for some sun.