Officials find fugitive, squirrel case a difficult nut to crack

Mickey Paulk has been booked into jail more than two dozen times. He’s currently on the run from police, who plan to arrest him on drug and weapon possession charges as soon as they catch up to him. But that doesn’t mean that he isn’t a responsible squirrel owner, he says.

“My squirrel is babied beyond anything anyone can imagine,” the 35-yearold fugitive told The Washington Post in a phone call from an undisclosed location early Thursday morning. “It has a very good life.”

Paulk and his unusual pet have been in the spotlight since Monday, when authorities in Limestone County, Alabama, accused him of keeping an “attack squirrel” in a cage and feeding it methamphetamine so that it would stay aggressive. The story made national headlines, but Paulk insists that he raised the squirrel as if it were his own child, and any allegations to the contrary are slander.

“The squirrel is not on meth,” he insisted. “I honestly think that would actually kill it.”

Paulk and the squirrel, who he named Deeznutz, have had a wild couple of days. According to the Decatur Daily, narcotics officers from the Limestone County Sheriff’s Office were tipped off about the squirrel during a drug investigation, and showed up with a search warrant on Monday.

They seized an unspecified quantity of methamphetamine, drug paraphernalia, ammunition and body armor from the apartment, and confiscated the squirrel. Paulk wasn’t there, but another man who was present was arrested and charged with possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia and loitering in a drug house.

“Welcome to the South, man,” one neighbor told WAAY-TV. “We’ve got squirrels on meth.”

But the Daily reported, it was impossible to confirm the animal’s alleged meth use — officers didn’t find any drugs in his cage, and there was no way to safely test the squirrel for meth.

But because it’s illegal to keep a squirrel as a pet in Alabama, they couldn’t just leave him there. Because the creature seemed healthy and wasn’t emaciated, police released him in a wooded area nearby.

Paulk claims that he had moved out of the apartment several weeks before because he didn’t want to “continue to live a certain kind of lifestyle,” and his name wasn’t on the lease. The squirrel was going to be the last thing that he moved over to his new place because his new roommate had a cat that he thought might scare it.

He had been going back to his old apartment every day to check on the squirrel and feed him, he told The Post, but the contraband that police found there wasn’t his.

“The charges that are on me are just as bogus as the squirrel doing meth,” he said.

Once he learned that police had released the squirrel outdoors, Paulk went back to try to find his twitchy companion. He had never planned on adopting a squirrel in the first place, but about a year ago, while he was working for a company cutting trees, the baby fell out of a branch. Paulk took the small creature home.

For the next six weeks, he woke up every two hours to feed the squirrel formula and make sure that the heating pad was working. Eventually, he trained the junior squirrel to use a litter box, sleep in a hammock, and eat potato chips and caramel M&M’s.

Paulk told The Post that there was no question he had to go back for the squirrel. The creature had been living in captivity since he was just a few hours old, and would surely die if left to fend for himself in the wild. Returning to the scene of the drug raid, he heard a screaming sound coming from a tree about 50 to 60 feet away. It was his pet.

“Once he saw it was me, he came on down,” he said. “He jumped on my arm, and we got in the car and left.”

Early Thursday morning, Paulk was still a wanted man. Thanks to his new infamy, a number of lawyers have contacted him, he said, and he plans to turn himself in once he has legal representation sorted out. He told The Post that he was “far enough away that it would cost them some gas to come get me,” and that he had just dropped off the creature with “a licensed person who deals with squirrels and whatnot” in Tennessee.

Otherwise, he feared, law enforcement might euthanize the squirrel once he was in custody.

“I do miss him,” he said. “I usually let him sleep somewhere near my bed. I do miss him hard.”