I've made a deal with squirrels. If one is crossing the road while I'm driving, I don't try to avoid it, that way I don't throw off its timing. Every once in a while one comes along that must not have gotten the memo.

Female squirrel to her husband," I was walking home today and about 1/3 of the way through my walk I saw this beautiful nut just accross this paved trail that kind of goes through the woods, just then I saw this human, riding a bike on the path, usually I just run away, but it was one beautiful nut! so I ran right in front of the human, you know?! to try and scare it! Oh my God. The sound I made when I got run over!! I didn't stop or turn around or anything. There's no way I could have brought myself to do what would've needed to be done if that human would have stopped!
I cried all the way home. I'm sure the other squirrels that saw me thought I was a little weird, with the tire track on my back and all, When I got home, my boyfriend was freaking out because he thought I had been hit by a car or something because I was so upset!! Then he made me drink a lot of acorn wine.
Ugh. I feel terrible. I'm never running towards a bike ever again, I dont care how beautiful a nut it is!

Please don't call me stupid. I know I probably sound that way, but I love nuts. I would never hurt anything on purpose! except those pesky humans! " Hope that made you feel just a bit better!

I went over one with my back tire.

He was darting this way and that while I was coming at him at about 18 mph. He started to leave the road to the opposite side.

At the last spit second, he decided to do a 180 and dart between my wheels and THUMP, my back wheel went right over his midsection, flipped him, and he almost flipped me off my bike.

I stopped and went back to see if I could help (i.e. finish him off if he was crippled), but he had taken off through a fence and into some brush, so I figured he must have survived OK.

Thanks you guys (and ilikebikes).
I hadn't even considered the fact that if that squirrel had ran out a split second later it would have been in my spokes! That would've been way, way worse!
I rode the path that it happened on this morning during the Mpls bike tour and I didn't see any dead squirrels on the path or off to the side of it. So, either someone dealt with it or he walked away from it. On the tour, I passed a freshly dead rabbit that looked a lot like it had probably been hit by a bike, though!
We set up a new squirrel feeder in our side yard and filled it with peanuts and pumpkin seeds. Then we filled up our two bird feeders with corn and sunflower seeds. So, now our yard has been completely overrun with squirrels. Earlier there were 3 grays and an albino in the feeding area at once! It was very irritating to my cats who were sitting in the window watching them.. I'm hoping to gain back some squirrel karma.
I do feel better, but wow. You just can't help a situation like that. There's nothing you can possibly do to avoid it!

Look at it this way - you may have helped a fox get a meal.

your welcome!

Riding in to work from the suburbs early this morning, I saw a raccoon about to come into the road ahead of me. He either saw or heard me and turned around and scooted away from the road. If I had a dime for every "resting" raccoon, opossum and squirrel I've seen on or by the road, I'd be riding titanium.

you could have bunny-hopped it. Sorry, i mean, squirrel-hopped.


don't mind me. i just hit a pair of fighting dogs last week, at about 40 kmh. i am still concussed.

always wear a helmet! saved me from a skull fracture for sure. now i have a shiny new one, but i won't get the chance to wear it for a month yet.

Was the squirrel running predictably? It seems like he would have been safer by doing his squirrel-running predictably on a ROAD instead of on a trail in the woods. If the squirrel had just done so and taken the lane, the cyclist would have been forced to pass safely.

I think what's happened is that after decades of the expansion of the Automobile Economy and the Automobile Culture, too many squirrels have "Sciuridae Inferiority Complex." As baby squirrels they were never taught to act like other road users, and now when grown they're afraid to run on the roads. And now it's trails, MSqPs, special squirrel crossings, and other infrastructure designed to grade-separate squirrels from automobiles, cyclists, and other road users.

When will these animals understand that they can safely be a part of traffic?

Yeah, an evolutionary biologist I used to know told me about a study in squirrel behavior that suggested squirrels are genetically programmed to be unpredictable-- makes 'em harder to catch or something. But don't go asking me for a citation, I haven't got it.

Is that what I am going wrong??? I aim for the little RATS when I am in my car, and I have never hit one yet. I'll have to stop trying.

dipy911