# Dead Squirrel Opinion



## mr drinky (Nov 7, 2012)

Ok, first of all, I cannot claim to have found this video. Justin0505 showed it to me last weekend, and I found it hilarious as I have a little baby girl. 

Here it is.

[video=youtube;9Nn0UkdDArM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Nn0UkdDArM[/video]

I thought it was funny, but I was raised on a golf course where my Dad was a greenskeeper and gave me a pail every day as a sort-of 
'babysitter'. He then told me to run up to the clubhouse (a quarter of a mile away) fill it up with water, run back, pour that water down a gopher hole, and do it all over -- again and again all day long until that gopher came out. He didn't expect I would catch those gophers and keep their tails pinned onto my bulletin board, but I did.

Anyhow, what do you think? My wife thinks it is nasty, but I am all right with it. The parents are good in my book. Don't freak out and teach kids your fears and prejudice.

k.


----------



## kalaeb (Nov 7, 2012)

http://vitals.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/06/13697324-fortunate-to-be-alive-girl-7-contracts-bubonic-plague-at-colorado-campground?lite

This is what I think. In a place with hanta virus and confirmed bubonic plague, I would just assume teach my kids that if its dead leave it alone.


----------



## mr drinky (Nov 7, 2012)

Yeah, but the dog just killed it in the back yard. It wasn't rotting on the side of the road. If you shot a dear and handled there is also a chance of getting deer ticks/lyme disease? I mean I don't like it when my daughter found that chunk of dog poop in the backyard either, but I told her to put it down and washed her up. And pregnant women are afraid of toxoplasmosis from cat litter, but doctors in other countries laugh at our American fear of it. In my book fear is relative and risk is all probability. But that's just me 

k.


----------



## kalaeb (Nov 7, 2012)

mr drinky said:


> Yeah, but the dog just killed it in the back yard.



Perhaps, but far be it from a 5 year old to discern cause of death, whether dog, bullet, or brain hemorrhage. Lesson learned by the child that its okay to pick up dead stuff. 

True fear is relative and risk is all probability, I would rather decrease the probability of my child contracting illness. But then again I even make him wash his hands after a trip to Toys R Us. 

Then again, I am an admitted germaphobe so take it witha grain of salt. To each their own.


----------



## Chuckles (Nov 7, 2012)

Don't think I would be mad at my kid or anything. What's done is done right? Most interesting to me is the decision to film it and put it online. Hope the girl is still cool with her actions a couple years from now. 

The way she says squirrel is cute as hell.


----------



## RRLOVER (Nov 7, 2012)

Baby girl and dead squirrel is so cute............The highlight was dad zooming in on mom's fabulous rack:angel2:


----------



## Salty dog (Nov 7, 2012)

I'm not sure why but I want to kick the crap out of the "dad" with the camera. A little respect you soft, desk sitting, pastie faced yuppie.


----------



## cclin (Nov 7, 2012)

sorry! may be just me; somehow, I don't feel quite comfortable with this video....:jawdrop:


----------



## RRLOVER (Nov 7, 2012)

mr drinky said:


> Yeah, but the dog just killed it in the back yard. It wasn't rotting on the side of the road. If you shot a dear and handled there is also a chance of getting deer ticks/lyme disease? I mean I don't like it when my daughter found that chunk of dog poop in the backyard either, but I told her to put it down and washed her up. And pregnant women are afraid of toxoplasmosis from cat litter, but doctors in other countries laugh at our American fear of it. In my book fear is relative and risk is all probability. But that's just me
> 
> k.



When my baby girl was 6 she wanted to touch every inch of a deer I bagged,I had no issues with it and feel she is better off from the experience.Circle of life!


----------



## mano (Nov 7, 2012)

It's a child's natural reaction to something soft and fuzzy that she's used to seeing hopping around in her back yard. She doesn't know from dead other than it's not hopping anymore. IMO the dad was respectful of the kid -able to see it through her eyes- and the animal -okay, no more touching, we're going to bury it.

I thought it was pretty funny.


----------



## Lucretia (Nov 7, 2012)

mr drinky said:


> I mean I don't like it when my daughter found that chunk of dog poop in the backyard either, but I told her to put it down and washed her up.



Which is what this guy should have done. Instead he had to pull out the camera and video her rubbing it all over herself. Even if the dog killed a "healthy" squirrel, it still is a potential source of disease and parasites, so why put your kid at risk so you can make a "funny" video? There's a big difference between letting a child learn about hunting by letting her examine a deer and letting a child rub her face on a dead animal. This little girl got encouragement to go out and cuddle the next dead animal she finds--not exactly a smart thing to teach your kid. The dad needs a quick kick in the nards.


----------



## daveb (Nov 7, 2012)

Cute video. But agree that Dad's time would have been better spent with a thorough hand washing session.

Tragedy here is how the dog has been bred out of that dog.


----------



## mr drinky (Nov 7, 2012)

Salty dog said:


> I'm not sure why but I want to kick the crap out of the "dad" with the camera. A little respect you soft, desk sitting, pastie faced yuppie.



I will say that the Dad filming it all is weird to me too. Permission to kick the crap out of him. 

With that said, the reason I posted it (on top of drinking a tad too much while watching the election results come in) was that I read the comments under the video and everyone was either ok with it or horrified by it it seemed. There was very little in between. Even the people I sent it on to were equally divided with strong opinions either way.

I'm still ok with it. I tend to think this is a one-off event brought upon by circumstances and the child probably won't continue to seek to play with dead animals or develop long-term ideas ideas of life and death based upon this episode. Also, the parents would probably handle the next dead animal situation differently I bet. That's my guess, but maybe I am wrong and they are both douche bag parents too. 

I have an ex-wife that teaches my eldest daughter to be afraid of EVERYTHING, and in this situation she would have ran shrieking at her full of fear, whisked the girl away, applied several rounds of cleansing and bathing, worried about it a lot, and then eventually went to the doctor. Sure the casual attitude of the parents might not be the best approach, but the worst would be to overreact in the other direction IMO. 

Now I am going to go play with a dead frog 

k.


----------



## Crothcipt (Nov 7, 2012)

mmmm frog legs. Well maybe not.


----------



## Burl Source (Nov 8, 2012)

mr drinky said:


> Now I am going to go play with a dead frog
> 
> k.


I found a frog behind our dryer one time. The heat and dust bunnies turned it into a dessicated mummy frog.
Can't remember what I did with it though.

To go a bit further off topic....
I was reading a while back about a niche industry using the tails from road kill squirrels to make high end paint brushes.


----------



## mr drinky (Nov 8, 2012)

Does anyone eat squirrel on this forum? I met a guy at a bar in MN who loved squirrel and was giving me recipes (which I have forgotten). I know in the south they eat it. Didn't Bourdain have it in one of his shows? 

k.


----------



## Vertigo (Nov 8, 2012)

mr drinky said:


> Does anyone eat squirrel on this forum? I met a guy at a bar in MN who loved squirrel and was giving me recipes (which I have forgotten). I know in the south they eat it. Didn't Bourdain have it in one of his shows?
> 
> k.



I went to borrow a raft from a guy last year who was chewing on a roasted squirrel on a stick. Didn't ask for a taste.


----------



## Lucretia (Nov 8, 2012)

Just remember if you cook up those squirrels you don't want to eat the brains, or you'll get "Mad Squirrel Disease".


----------



## Eamon Burke (Nov 8, 2012)

Our completely disabling aversion to anything dead is a pretty unhealthy byproduct of a sanitized, consumer driven culture. It's sort of the end result of the nation being driven by selling things through envy and jealousy.

That said, squirrels can be pretty nasty. I'd want to know why it died first. But there's nothing you can do if your daughter acts like an insane person sometimes. Mine do.

Any man with a toddler has had that time that they reach up and grab your junk through your clothes and you jump and they realize they've got a way to pester the crap out of you. It's a fun game for them for a little while, and you can't help but laugh at how unprepared we all are for raising children. Why are we all born complete whackos?


----------



## Lucretia (Nov 8, 2012)

mr drinky said:


> Does anyone eat squirrel on this forum? I met a guy at a bar in MN who loved squirrel and was giving me recipes (which I have forgotten). I know in the south they eat it. Didn't Bourdain have it in one of his shows?
> 
> k.


 
My dad used to eat it regularly when he went hunting. They might not have been able to bag a deer, but they were hard on the squirrels.


----------



## Zwiefel (Nov 8, 2012)

I had it several times as a kid, usually just roast with salt/pepper.

I think it's used in rural Louisiana as a meat source for gumbo sometimes.


----------



## sachem allison (Nov 8, 2012)

mr drinky said:


> Does anyone eat squirrel on this forum? I met a guy at a bar in MN who loved squirrel and was giving me recipes (which I have forgotten). I know in the south they eat it. Didn't Bourdain have it in one of his shows?
> 
> k.



I like it fried like chicken and also use it as a substitute for rabbit.


----------



## Chuckles (Nov 8, 2012)

Seems like it would be a pain to clean up. 

Squirrel is to Rabbit as Quail is to Chicken?


----------



## Zwiefel (Nov 8, 2012)

I've always seen it served whole...much like quail/pheasant.


----------



## Salty dog (Nov 8, 2012)

Up here they eat chestnuts. Bet they are tastey


----------



## SpikeC (Nov 8, 2012)

If acorn fed pigs are good, why not?


----------



## 99Limited (Nov 8, 2012)

You need a few germs now and then to build up an immunity to all those bad illness that can come later in life. To me, this dad understands this, play with dead squirrel for a few minutes and then let's take a bath. 

Squirrels taste pretty good if you brown them first and them braise them for a little while. Problem with eating squirrels is you need so many since all that's worth eating is the two hind legs.


----------



## daveb (Nov 8, 2012)

"Can't make Brunswick Stew without squirrel." Saw that at a BBQ show once - and you know BBQrs never lie...


----------



## SpikeC (Nov 8, 2012)

I once worked with a woman who came from the south. She said that the best part of the squirrel was the head. You suck the brains out.


----------



## Chuckles (Nov 8, 2012)

> You suck the brains out.



Ghost of Christmas future for this little girl.


----------



## mr drinky (Nov 8, 2012)

I can't find a supplier of squirrel meat online except this guy in Texas who cans them. That sounds rather nasty. 

But it appears as if in the UK squirrel has been on the menu for a decade or so.

k.


----------



## Mike9 (Nov 8, 2012)

Well we had a first frost, a first snow and now it's time to sight my .22 pellet rifle in and harvest some grey squirrels that have fattened up on pine nuts and black walnuts. They do taste good and are an easy take right off the back porch.


----------



## stereo.pete (Nov 8, 2012)

lolz...kids, oh the age of ignorance.


----------



## mr drinky (Nov 9, 2012)

Side story. I had an uncle who was obsessed with exporting squirrels from Minnesota to some treeless barren, space near Dickinson, North Dakota. Poor squirrels. 

I actually pitched the story to This American Life and they were interested, and I put them in touch with the family, but then he died suddenly of cancer. To this day, I shake my head when I think of him. He would trap squirrels in MN and at every opportunity transport them to North Dakota. He would sometimes use funerals as rendezvous points and without warning ask his daughter to transfer onward a cage full of squirrels back to NoDak for release. 

I still don't know what the point was. 

k.


----------



## Carl (Nov 9, 2012)

City squirrels, for the most part, are nasty. They eat trash and carrion, whatever they can get.

Country squirrels, for the most part, are wonderful. They eat seeds, nuts and the occasional bug. If you SEE parasites, inside or out, toss it. If it looks healthy and lively and well fed, go for it. Treat it like wild hare, not like cage-raise rabbit.


----------



## stereo.pete (Nov 9, 2012)

Huh???


----------

