Santa Cruz: Ornery mother squirrel wrangled from tree

SANTA CRUZ — Emily went down biting.

It took two fire engines, an animal-services officer and a glove-clad wildlife handler to remove the eastern gray squirrel, a new mother of three, from the corner of Maple and Cedar streets about noon Friday.

It was the second time in a year Emily was put in a box and moved to a new home. Charlotte Nolan-Reyes found 4-week-old Emily in August when the newborn fell near Nolan-Reyes’ car at Mission Hill Middle School. It was a sign she might have fallen from a nest. Emily was taken downtown, where Nolan-Reyes has lived more than a decade.

Emily’s upbringing did not inspire covert behavior even before the attacks. On numerous occasions, she sprinted into a massage parlor across the street, going upstairs and relieving herself on the carpets.

Emily was bottle-fed at first. She soon matured and eventually nested with her little family in a grapefruit tree’s canopy above the busy downtown corner where she has bitten or scratched five people the last two weeks. Being hand-raised and accustomed to human contact became a problem for the Maple Street newcomer and Friday, she had to go, authorities said.

Native Animal Rescue volunteer Bill Snell, wearing large leather gloves, crawled to the end of a firetruck’s ladder and faced Emily above the cordoned street. A crowd gathered below. Emily faced Snell with apparent confidence. Snell grappled as she tried to bite him and placed the squirrel alone into a blue carrier.

“I’ve gotten a couple of adult squirrels that were in distress before, but it was on ground level,” Snell said. It was the first time he ever removed a nest of newborn squirrels.

A firefighter said he was surprised at the animal’s size. “She wasn’t scared at all,” he said.

As Snell answered questions about the encounter, Emily gnawed a small hole in the side of the box and attempted to escape.

Nolan-Reyes was vocal throughout the operation.

“I’m just happy if they don’t kill her. I just want her to stay with her babies,” Nolan-Reyes said. “I need to know where they’re going to be moved to. I already had a squirrel house up in the back I was going to move her into. I want to know where they’re going so I can visit. I want to see for myself.”

Animal Shelter Field Manager Todd Stosuy said it is against state law to handle wild animals, such as squirrels. It was the first time in his 16 years working in Santa Cruz that a squirrel had to be relocated for aggressive behavior.

Molly Meehan of Seabright expected a romantic Thursday evening — walking with her boyfriend to a spa date downtown — when she first met Emily.

“It hopped in front of us and I said, ‘Something is wrong with that squirrel,’” Meehan said. It was about 8 p.m., Emily’s apparent witching hour when most of the attacks were reported.

Emily climbed Meehan’s left leg and scratched through the woman’s pants. Meehan initially couldn’t fend off the rodent but soon shook free, losing a sandal in the scuffle.

“Then it came back for more,” Meehan said. “It got all the way up to the back of my thigh.”

Then Emily was “hounding” Meehan’s sandal.

“She wouldn’t leave it alone,” Meehan said.

Nolan-Reyes heard the commotion and tried to help by offering Emily some nuts. Meehan immediately went to Dominican Hospital, where she learned that Emily already had been in the Sentinel the same day.

Meehan underwent a dose of rabies vaccines as a result. She said it was unfair to be “ambushed” by a squirrel and the animal’s caretaker and said it is “bananas” that the public-health risk did not trump the animal’s well-being.

In a separate case, Emily attacked a woman about 8 p.m. Monday and bit her ankle twice.

“She said she really had to shake it off,” neighbor Arthur Burton has said. He watched Emily stare at the woman after the attack.

“I couldn’t tell whether it was like, ‘I’m a badass’ or ‘Who’s next?’” Burton said.

Tuesday, Emily struck twice, attacking a woman and ripping open a 20-year-old man’s arm. The man had to be treated at an emergency room, his father said in a Facebook post.

Nolan-Reyes has scars up her arm from Emily’s “nibbles.” The most recent scar was from last week, she said.

Stosuy said the animal-rescue volunteer helped to prevent a less favorable outcome.

“If we took them, they’d have to be put down,” Stosuy said.

“She was protecting her young,” Snell said.