Was it a bird, a plane, or a squirrel?

Queen’s Park players were on a high after their draw with St Mirren but were also glad someone dealt with the dead pigeon which crashed down on the pitch.

The bird fell on to the Hampden turf as the Betfred Cup group match, which was won by the Saints on penalties, was reaching full-time.

Visiting goalkeeper Craig Sampson was quick to pick it up and place it pitch side and the bizarre moment sent Queen’s Park’s Twitter account into meltdown.

The Spiders’media man Sean Davenport originally thought it was a squirrel which had fallen from the sky.

He tweeted:“We’ve seen some strange things at Hampden but St Mirren keeper Craig Samson has just been forced to remove what looks like a dead squirrel dropped onto the pitch by a seagull.

The comment was retweeted nearly 10,000 times and gained 24,000 likes.

And once it was established it was a pigeon, his clarification Tweet reached another 1800 retweets.

Shot-stopper Sampson, who was the penalty shoot-out hero to earn St Mirren a bonus point, said it was one of the strangest things he’d seen at a game.

He said:“Some Queen’s Park fans booed me when I threw it down, probably thinking it was still alive. But it was definitely dead, its head was gone.

“I saw the tweet after the game saying it was a dead squirrel, but that would just have been silly.”

Spiders boss Gus MacPherson said: “I got told that a dead bird landed on the pitch.

“I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but thankfully Craig dealt with it.”