I'd call that an (twisted) artist... around my town (Minneapolis) you can find lots of interesting street art. I might start doing this on the streets around here!

i've hit a squirrel on my mtn bike. Rear wheel only, so just one 'bump' and he skittered off into the bushes. I didn't crash.

I do a spitting hiss at squirrels and cats by the side of the road. It usually scares them back into the bushes.

And, similar to a velocity's post, I was riding on the Little Miami Trail a few years ago, heard a crack of a branch breaking, and had the branch end with a squirrel hanging on land a few feet to the side of me.

I've seen other photos of squirrels caught in spokes. They can be dangerous.

This made me laugh:

[QUOTE=velocity;17565261]Awesome thread.

I was riding about 20mph when a squirrel darted into the roadway, stopped and stared at me, darted back to the roadside; then he ran back across the road and between my wheels. CRUNCH!!
No damage to my bike but it was pretty tough on the squirrel.
Sometimes yelling "Squirrel !" gets them to run away but not this time.

At RAGBRAI ([Des Moines] Register's Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa), roadkill is appropriately memorialized by dropping a few strings of Mardi Gras beads upon the dear departed. It is a fine tradition.

guinea pig is pretty decent eating!

The squirrels - they're after me! Why? They think I'm nuts!

They take up residence in my roof when it's really cold out. Nasty filthy little tree rats.

If you can make a sound that is reasonably similar to a squirrel's chittering alarm call, they will usually run away from you. Pursing your mouth and sucking air in through your teeth can kind of sound like that. It confuses other cyclists, though. And runners. And dogs... Any non-squirrels that hear it, really.

I think the real question we need to ask ourselves here is if squirrel vs. bike encounters are more of a danger with clipless pedals or platform pedals.

I feel the same way about toddlers and young children. One of them totally @#$%ed up my Enve fork once.

Ⓥ

Doing rides on a rabbit-infested road (and I mean, on a 20 km round trip, I could count twenty on march, forty on april and seventy on june) like I did in A'dam can be extremely adrenalin-burst-inducing. I sometimes thought of hitting one and cooking it afterwards, but then, for some reason I envisioned myself as the injured one so I didn't dare.

Maybe I should have called this tread Squirrel Hitter instead?
V

Just living up to my stereotype!

The thing that I've seen is they can't make up their mind and zigzag around until the last second so their quickness doesn't help them -- it actually works against them. Although the time that I had the squirrel run inside my wheel I was going fairly slowly and it just ran straight at me. And that bike has 32 spoke wheels, so not low spoke count. Thought for sure I was going to have to pull a dead squirrel out of my wheel, but the only thing left behind were a few tufts of hair.

it's not like we are all trying to hit the squirrels I mean the cats probably would like that but I'm sure we are more worried about the varmints then we are about ourselves at that time!

They are well trained and organized. We found a vidy of one of their trainings be afraid be very afraid!
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10153105751844602&pnref=story

I'd rather not hurt a squirrel either, but they're squirrelly. By definition. However, I have seen enough pictures of wrecked cyclists that I definitely worry about me when I see a squirrel running around on the road.

One of those evil little varmints is climbing a tree right outside my window as I type this. Every now and then he pauses to shake his tail. I don't know what that means, but I assume he's up to no good.

Elephants are the real danger. Hopefully, i don't see much crossing the streets here in Canada.

Squirrels are nowhere near as sinister as penguins

In another thread someone asked about building a 24 spoke wheel , this thread made me think about sharpening the edges of your flat bladed spokes .

so it will slice thru a squirrel as Easily as the Guillotines of the French Revolution decapitated .

I haven't watched Wallace and Gromit is ages! But to avoid digressing, I doubt Penguins or Elephants are going to wreak havoc in Minnesota ... Unless I detour through the zoo.

ok that is awesome

V

I saw bunnies tracks in the fresh snow this morning.