A SQUIRREL KING ON FILM
Rat kings and squirrel kings are famous if exceedingly rare rodent aggregations whose unfortunate members, often still alive when encountered, are inextricably – and inexplicably – bound to one another via a Gordian-like intertwining of their tails. Their occurrence has never been satisfactorily explained, but this is not really surprising, because, after all, how can their tails have become so hideously, inseparably entwined whilst the creatures are actually alive? Although several such monstrosities have been preserved and retained in museums as major curiosities, and a fair few photographs and even some X-rays of them also exist, as far as I am aware no example has ever been filmed while still in the living state – until 21 May 2017, that is. For this was when 41-year-old Andrew Day, gazing out of a window at his parents’ home in Bangor, Maine, USA, spotted what looked initially like a cat attacking an injured squirrel, squirming and writhing as if in pain on the pavement nearby. When Day went outside to take a closer look, however, he was amazed to discover that it was actually four baby squirrels bound to one another by their intertwined tails – a sight so bizarre that he videoed it on his mobile phone.
After scaring off a real cat that seemed ready to pounce upon them, Day and his father then donned protective gloves and, armed with scissors, spent an hour and a half carefully snipping away tangled hair and associated debris (pieces of twigs and straw) from these squirrels’ tails, which he later described as resembling “a giant dreadlock”, until the constrained quartet were finally separated from one another. When released, they immediately fled to a tree close by, in which an adult squirrel, presumably their mother, was waiting for them. The fact that their entangled tail hair contained twig and straw fragments suggested that the knotting had occurred while they were still in their nest. Moreover, the length of time that it had taken for them to be disentangled shows just how difficult, if not nigh on impossible, it would be for such aggregations to be created artificially, i.e. by someone deliberately trying to knot together the tails of living squirrels (or rats) to yield a ‘king’ – as has been suggested by some as an explanation for these anomalies – and especially as previously documented living ‘kings’ have generally contained more, sometimes many more, than a mere four individuals. Day’s video of the squirrel king that he rescued and separated can presently be viewed on YouTube. http://actoutwithaislinn.bangordailynews. com/2017/05/22/recreation/four-babysquirrels-with-tails-tangled-togetherrescued-by-bangor-men/ 22 May 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDbs0b8zAU 21 May 2017.