Behind the Badge - The Squirrel King
The Squirrel King
District Game Warden Jon Tofteland
As a game warden, there’s no such thing as a “normal” day. But there are some that are more interesting than others.
One of those more interesting days happened last September.
I received a call about multiple squirrels stuck together on a tree.
It’s not every day that we deal with animal emergencies, let alone one as strange sounding as this.
I went to check it out and found that at least six young squirrels had their tails tangled together and were climbing on the side of a tree, with each squirrel trying to run in a different direction.
After a minute or so of thinking of a game plan, I grabbed a net and used it to pin the squirrels to the tree so they wouldn’t move.
I was trying different attempts to pull the squirrels apart with no luck.
As I’m trying to figure out how to get these squirrels apart, the mama squirrel was circling above us, not too impressed by my efforts.
It was an added level of stress as I waited for her to jump on me while giving her meanest squeak.
After a closer look at the tails, it looked just like they were braided together.
I began to unweave their tails piece by piece until suddenly they became free all at once and squirrels were running everywhere!
Most of them ran back up the tree but one fell off and ran across the ground to the next tree over with a couple neighborhood cats that had been circling, looking for an easy meal, hot on the trail.
The tree it picked wasn’t very big, so the squirrel didn’t have much room to run away.
The squirrel must have been exhausted since it let me pick it up off the tree and take it to the original tree to get it back with the rest of them.
A picture of the squirrels made a local social media site and some of the comments had said this type of incident was called a squirrel king.
I was curious and did a little research.
It appears it is relatively rare and happens when a litter of squirrels get their tails stuck together while they are in their nest moving around and get sap or something sticky on their tails.
These squirrels were found on the side of an evergreen tree and the sap from the tree had acted like glue, holding their tails together.
It wasn’t the usual game warden duties, like working a poaching case or dealing with a moose or an elk, but it’s those different days that keep this job interesting!