This video of a police office from Mesquite, Texas, pepper spraying a baby squirrel has been burning up the internets with over 347,000 hits so far.
Apparently the cute fuzzy animal had been following students at Kimbrough Middle School around, so the officer proceeded to “protect” the students by pepper spraying him.
You can watch the cute little thing writhe in agony in this video.
The squirrel was cared for at a rehabilitation facility, and later released into the wild—where it is no doubt dismembering innocent children even as I write!
The Mesquite Police Department later defended the officer, saying that the officer believed the animal had rabies.
I guess that means that next time I believe somebody is an alien impostor then it’s OK for me to shoot them through the head with a giant laser beam.
Well despite what he may have believed, the incidence of rabies in squirrels is extremely rare.
So even if this baby squirrel, which looks hardly big enough to even have teeth, bit any of the students there is zero chance that they would have contracted rabies.
Baby squirrels sometimes go through a friendly phase and may follow people around. I’ve even had them climb up my pant leg.
If they follow me around or are putting themselves in danger, I just grab them and place them on a nearby tree or some other safe place.
I guess it’s lucky for me that I wasn’t there at the time.
I’d probably be in a Texas jail cell now because there’s no way that I would have stood by and let this officer harm that squirrel.
