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I went out tonight when I got home from work to hook up the soaker hoses in my vegetable garden and found a dead squirrel in my yard. I went back inside and got a paper towel and two plastic bags and then headed back out to examine and remove the body. He/she was an adult and had no signs of trauma or injuries, no blood or wounds, just looked like it layed down on it's side and died. So, do squirrels just die of natural causes, like heart attacks or heat stroke? The only thing I've put down in my yard is cracked corn and horse bedding pellets that have swelled and turned to saw dust. Could the corn have been tainted or perhaps fungi has started to grow on it that would be harmful to the squirrels or other wildlife? Any thoughts?

Yes, squirrels, just like us can just die. Maybe it fell out of the tree and snapped its neck or old age.

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I hope that's what happened. Not that I'm happy about it falling and dying, but that would make me feel better than thinking that I, or someone else in the neighborhood, put down something down in a yard that could have killed it.

So.... I'll be the first to say it. What did you do with the free OM?

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Ya know, I thought about burying him in/under my compost pile, but I thought I'd just give him a proper burial in a small trash bag. He's currently in my trash can. If he had some sort of disease or something, I don't really want him haning around decomposing.

Isn't decomposing what happens when you erase the music you've written?

But yep, animals up and die for no apparent reason. Occasionally I find something that passed on in the yard, it usually gets put under a Thuja.

I've never called the coroner, but I've thought about it...

Most animals (even domestic animals) tend to go off by themselves to die if they are sick and sense that it's coming, so I guess it's more likely this was something sudden like a fall from the tree or a heart attack. However, with a dog and a kid, I think I'll just leave him in the trash and pass on the free organic matter at this time, just in case it was some sort of disease.

Squirrel related... We had a squirrel living around my lawn that I am convinced was epileptic or something. About every two weeks or so it would fall out of the tree for no apparent reason. Usually it was a good 20+ foot fall onto the lawn. It would lay there for about 30 seconds or so, get up, shake itself and run right back up the tree. Looked to run and jump normally and seemed pretty healthy, except for the random falls from the tree.

ouch.

One less squirrel digging up your yard.

They drop dead all the time on my property from leadidus strain 12 and 22. They do not call them tree rats for nothing.

leadidus strain 12 and 22

TW, it's also known as "Sudden Onset Acute Lead Poisoning".

My squirrel had no sign of SOALP. I've been seeing dead bugs, especially the extra large japanese beetles. I'm not complaining about the JBs being dead, but I've not put anything in my yard except for wood pellets, cracked corn, dawn and BLSC and KH. Guess I was thinking along the lines of the canary in the coal mine. I have a young child, a dog and cats so when I just find something dead in my yard, it concerns me a bit.

Japanese beetles did NOT have a good year. Normally, I'd empty my bags fairly regularly. This year, twice, and neither time was a large number. The cannas are undamaged, the rose came through with minimal nibbling.

I don't know if it was the warm winter, very warm spring, or hot summer period, and I haven't noticed any impact on any other species (although bees are a bit rarer than normal this year as well).

Although I did find two dead birds total this year, which is about two more than normal.

Sometimes diseases sweep through a species and reduce their numbers. That's fairly normal--consider the Black Plague in humans from the 14th through 17th centuries. It's possible something was perking in the JB population and finally went epidemic.

If that's the case, I'm not unhappy.

sc4dr wrote:One less squirrel digging up your yard.

Sounds good to me...hate squirrels.

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