Slam or save the squirrels?
An annual hunt to raise money in a rural New York village is driving some animal activists nuts.
For the last six years, the volunteer Fire Department of rural Holley, N.Y., has raised money for new equipment by sponsoring a hunting contest to see who could shoot the fattest squirrel. Other than some concerns that cheaters might pack squirrels with rocks before weigh-in, the event has always gone off without a hitch. Until now. This year, the squirrels in Holley, population 1,800, have gone viral, and the social media campaign to stop the seventh annual Squirrel Slam on Saturday has turned into a culture war between Americans who feed squirrels and Americans who serve them in pot pies with sherried mushrooms.
Passions are running so high that the FBI was called in to investigate death threats against “the whole village board, the police, the firefighters” and virtually every official in the one-square-mile village, according to Police Chief William Murphy, who noted that he doesn’t hunt or eat squirrels himself.
In the pro-squirrel camp are animal activists, wildlife rehabilitators, a state senator, gun opponents, a New Age minister in Texas who heals wounded squirrels through Reiki massage, and a small subculture of pet lovers eager to spread the word about the unique joys of “homesquirreling.”
Through Facebook postings, online petitions, and up to 3,000 emails a day and hundreds of phone calls to Holley officials, the squirrel advocates have tried to persuade the Fire Department to cancel the slam, which offers cash prizes of up to $200 to two-person teams whose five-squirrel limit weighs the most. (“No internal packing or soaking of squirrels for added weight!!!” the rules state.)
Of particular ire to hunting opponents is a new category this year offering a special prize to participants under the age of 14.
In addition to cash awards, the slam will raff le off rifles, including a semiautomatic, .22-caliber assaultstyle gun similar to one Connecticut police found in the arsenal of the Sandy Hook school shooter — a fact that has further incensed the squirrel advocates.
“BREEDING SERIAL KILLERS,” railed one commenter on the Facebook page dedicated to saving Holley’s doomed rodents.
“Children as young as 12 years old are being encouraged to participate and kill with guns. When I saw that, I just felt our culture is going the wrong direction,” explained Julie Gallagher, who teaches Reiki massage and sends healing energy through pecans to sick or wounded squirrels around the lake where she hikes in Austin.
“I noticed that when I would give an injured squirrel Reiki, the squirrel would heal much more quickly than humans,” Gallagher blogged on her squirrelplanet.org website. “I realized that the mind of a squirrel is free and without concerns. Therefore, there are no obstacles to their experiencing complete healing.”
Gallagher said that nasty messages and threats from pro-gun types and squirrel haters prompted her to temporarily dismantle her website after she launched an online petition to stop the Holley hunt.
She was among three squirrel campaigners to collect more than 35,000 signatures begging Holley not to “slam” its squirrels. Their opposition was echoed by state Sen. Tony Avella (DQueens) at an Albany news conference he held Monday in defense of the squirrels.
“What the heck is going on in Holley?” Avella demanded. “Picture this little squirrel going to get a nut, probably coming up to the individual, trying to be friendly, and then the kid pulls out a gun and shoots him!”
In Santa Cruz, a woman launched a crowd-funding campaign on indiegogo.com to raise $5,000 to offer the Fire Department if they would call off the squirrel slam. The New York Citybased Friends of Animals promised that its grateful supporters would donate “far more” than what the hunt is now expected to rake in from its $10 registration fees. More than 1,000 tickets — triple the norm — have been sold so far, the police chief said Thursday, with hunters heading in from Buffalo, Rochester and even Pennsylvania.
In a terse statement read at the monthly planning meeting Monday, Holley Mayor John W. Kenney Jr. said that because squirrel hunting is legal in New York and the Fire Department’s fundraising efforts had the full support of village trustees, the matter is not up for debate. Hunters pursue their quarry on private land, and are forbidden from shooting squirrels within the village proper.
Friends of Animals state director Edita Birnkrant said attempts to derail the event with a matching-funds offer failed.
“They are digging in their heels,” she said. “‘This is our way of life, our family values, part of our tradition,’ is what we are told. I’m pretty sure if we had offered $100,000, they wouldn’t have canceled it.”