Sept. 25 (UPI) — Residents of a California neighborhood are warning other locals to beware of “a very mean squirrel” that has sent at least two people to the emergency room.
Joan Heblack, a resident of the Lucas Valley neighborhood in San Rafael, said she was taking her morning walk recently when the squirrel attacked her leg.
“It clamped onto my leg. The tail was flying up here. I was like, ‘Get it off me, get off me!’ I didn’t want to touch it,” Heblack told KGO-TV.
Another resident, Isabel Campoy, said she and her daughter were attacked by the rambunctious rodent while walking. Campoy ended up going to the ER with a wound to her arm.
Marie Ayoob said her husband, Joe, also had a confrontation with the squirrel when he tried to get the animal to stop biting his wooden fence.
“It took a big chunk of the wood and we thought, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s hungry or something.’ Joe, my husband, took off his cap and hit it so it can go away, and [the squirrel] turned around and jumped on his head,” she told KRON-TV.
Flyers were put up in the neighborhood warning residents to keep an eye out for the “attack squirrel.”
“This is not a joke,” the flyers read. “More than five people have been attacked by a very mean squirrel over the past few days on Diablo Circle and Mount Lassen.”
A representative of the local WildCare wildlife hospital said squirrels do not carry rabies. The animals do sometimes turn aggressive when fed by humans, however.
“WildCare has received numerous calls about a squirrel attacking residents in the Lucas Valley neighborhood of San Rafael,” the representative said. “Unfortunately, the squirrel is most likely approaching people and biting them because he was raised by people, or has been hand-fed by a humans, but is now on his own, uncertain about how to forage, and desperate for food. Squirrels are naturally shy animals.”
