Well I have bad news and good news. The good news first, the gray squirrel living in our dishwasher has finally been vacated. The bad news is that this squirrel is now sans tail!!! I hesitated to share this information as I felt awful but felt like it was my scientific duty to share this valuable info. After scouring the internet for anything I found only scanty data about this phenomena. Squirrelys can indeed detach their tails when threatened which is how this one must have felt after I grabbed it by its tail and carried it outside. Squirrely is a good word for these guys, it swirled around clearly unhappy I uprooted it from my house (we checked for nesting and it had not yet started one; there aren't any motherless babies to worry about). If it had been calm it would have been freed with its tail intact but alas no, it swirled so much so that the last segment of its tail detached! Amazingly enough, there was no spine in the tail, which, after reading more information, makes sense. It sacraficed its tail (although completely unecessarily given my love for anything small and cute) to 'save its life'.
The tail which was left behind had no ligiments, no blood, no goo, really just an empty shell. I have observed this same phenomena with lizards and their tails have much more meat, blood, cartilidge, etc. Although the squirrel is certainly going to be less attractive and much more embarrassed than it would have had it kept its tail, metabolically it appears to be less detrimental to the health of a squirrel than to the health of a lizard.
I hope that anyone experiencing this event in the future finds this information helpful. Although I still feel bad, I am pretty sure the squirrel is going to be fine. No broken bones and it won't bleed to death. Maybe its balance will be worse for wear, but it now has a great story to tell to its children and grandchildren, hopefully. Or I will incur the wrath of the squirrel kingdom and wake up to find a horde over me...
At least it is no longer pooping in my dishes.
I think that the squirrels are a non-native exotic species Dremomys rufigenis or another similar species... How they got here? I have no idea, but if I catch them they are going to live at the Oregon Zoo.
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