Mutant Squirrel Dogs And Pending Sleep Deprivation
The problem with reporting about the Animal Uprising™ is that after a while, you tend to sit bolt upright at night out of a sound sleep and say to yourself, "Oh, no! What if….(Fill in blank)." Well, you say it to yourself if you don't want to get punched by your significant other, anyway. But you get the picture. Sometimes, worst case scenarios just pop into your head. Happens all the time around here, as we explain, fairly regularly these days, to that nice man from the health department who visits more and more often. (We think he likes the cookies we serve with the tea.)
But we never even came close to predicting this one. A story from Arkansas about mutant squirrel dogs that even we couldn't have come up with. No really.
DRIGGS, AR–This story may seem a little nuts, but maybe because it's about a squirrel dog that doesn't hunt them. Instead, the momma dog from Driggs, Arkansas decided to raise one as her own son. When the Wootton Family set out to save a baby squirrel, they had no idea what would happen."She licks it like it's her baby and takes care of it like it is her young," Kathy Wootton said as she smiled.
They are an odd little family: the momma Maltese named Pitty Pat, her little girl pup, and yes, her adopted son the squirrel.
Cousins Caleb and Josh heard the infant's cries for help nearly two weeks ago.
"We thought it was a baby chicken or something, so we came over here and it was a baby squirrel in the tree," Josh explained.
So, Josh's mom Kathy climbed the ladder to rescue the baby that was barely clinging to life and a limb. The Forest Service told the family that an owl probably attacked the nest and the baby squirrel was the only survivor.
"Told me just good luck with it and hoped that we raised him up," Kathy said.
And that's just what she set out to do. She put the squirrel with the momma dog to help keep it warm and bottle fed the baby for four days, but then on the fifth…
"When I went to get it, it was nursing the mother dog," Kathy exclaimed.
Look, we hate to be alarmist around here. We're all about calm and reasonable reporting about the horrors of the Animal Uprising™. But think of how deadly dogs that can climb trees will be! This is no laughing matter. We once spent a month in Arkansas over a weekend, so we know that is a very odd corner of the country. But seriously, we aren't real sure we'll be able to sit bolt upright out of a sound sleep tonight.
We may never sleep again, worrying about mutant squirrel dogs dropping on our heads from trees.
By Bleepless, Sunday, 18 March , 2007 @ 6:43 pm
Notice that the alleged squirrels were supposedly killed by a purported owl. Oh, really? Please consider that OWLS ARE CUTE! So were they the enemy? Perhaps it was mole rats. This propaganda is at the taxpayers’ expense.
By Thomas, Sunday, 18 March , 2007 @ 10:13 pm
I wonder if the baby squirrel/dog will have as much trouble as my friend Justin Weissberger, an adopted Korean who was raised as an American Jew.
By Gaius, Sunday, 18 March , 2007 @ 10:19 pm
It sure will be unusual, won’t it? I rather doubt the squirrel will ever successfully move back to the wild. It likely wouldn’t last long if it did. Not all dogs are “momma”. Which it would discover too late.