Summary
December 29 - December 30, 2020: Multiple neighbors in one part of New York City report having been attacked by hyper-aggressive squirrels. it sounds funny, but if you look at the video (below) you'll see there was a lot of human blood shed in the unprovoked attacks. Apparently the little buggers are vicious, and can bite pretty hard and latch on to a flailing human and refuse to let go. It's way more horrific than you might think. The reason for the attacks was unknown, but not expected to be rabies at least (based on how rare rabies is in squirrels and other small rodents).
Attempts to use a live trap to catch the squirrels had not been successful as of the time of reporting.
See Also: Squirrel Power! and Squirrel Invasion of 1801 for other examples of the trouble these beasts may cause.
Source
Game and Story Use
- Some sort of squirrel mindcontrol supervillain?
- The Rats of NIMH gone bad? MK Ultra/Manchurian Candidate/Treadstone-style program for rodents? Government Conspiracy testing a new superweapon on the citizenry? Rodents getting into a cache of supersoldier serum?
- Were-squirrels? Did the whole neighborhood transform at the next full moon?
- Cats of Ulthar situation, where someone in the neighborhood did something bad to a squirrel, and now the little guys are getting even? Rocky the Flying Squirrel meets Bernard Goetz?
- Ratatosk has come down from Yggdrasil to visit Ragnarok upon New York. Maybe Níðhöggr (or Nidhogg's enemy the Eagle, or perennial Norse trouble-maker Loki) is holding someone dear to the squirrel hostage, and forcing the viking messenger of the gods to cause trouble. Maybe Nidhogg's venom is driving Ratatosk berserk. This could be the start of an amazing Scion RPG scenario.
- Need's to get them some rednecks - squirrel's is good eatin.
- Speaking of which, at least part of the problem is likely to be people who feed the bloody things in parks, causing them to lose their fear of humans and become accustomed to demanding food from them. The same sort of aggressive begging can be demonstrated amongst all sorts of species and is why a lot of parks try to dissuade tourists from feeding the wildlife.
- It may also be yet another unforeseen consequence of the pandemic. With people staying home, there's probably fewer people feeding animals in the parks, and not nearly so much food waste in the dumpsters behind restaurants.