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Health & Fitness

The Rally Squirrel

Squirrels rally from "most hated" to mascot at World Series Playoff.

By now everyone has seen or heard the legend of the Rally Squirrel. Specifically, how a hyperactive squirrel crossed home plate at Busch Stadium in the Cardinals vs Phillies playoff game and the Redbirds rallied to win. A friend who was at the game claims to have seen not one but four squirrels in the stadium that day.

This blog is about St. Louisans' love/hate relationship with Sciurus carolinensis.

The love affair can be summed up by the Rally Squirrel. Within hours of the Rally Game, film footage was posted and re-posted on blogs and YouTube; the story was Facebooked, Tweeted, and e-mailed on social media sites. Rally Squirrel even got a Wikipedia definition!

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St. Louisans are friendly, proud, brave, hardworking Midwesterners, and the Rally Squirrel was quickly enshrined as their mascot. Soon thousands of towels, T-shirts, and squirrel paraphernalia were printed and sold.

The hate affair with squirrels and St. Louis has a more sinister side. The busy rodents are everywhere, especially this fall as they scavenge a bumper crop of walnuts. The little devils chew walnuts on my third-floor deck and litter it and the steps with husks and their remains. They recently found a cork (leftover from a wine-drinking party there) and chewed half of it up before deciding it was inedible.

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St. Louis gardeners waged war on the varmints this summer. With the long drought in July and August, hardly anyone got any ripe tomatoes. Squirrels, always thirsty, would take one or two bites out of the love apples or pluck them off the bushes before the tomatoes got to proper eating size. St. Louisans tried red pepper flakes, cayenne pepper, dish-washing liquid as a spray, and various cages of mesh or wire.

A gardener with an engineering background tried a Maginot Line of electrified fencing. No remedies seemed to deter the marauding Huns. St. Louisans finally reverted to a remedy which their parents and grandparents swore by: trapping. Thus, squirrels ended up in Forest Park or University City, squirrels ended up in Wildwood, and Parkway squirrels ended up in St. Charles County. (One enterprising chef put his neighbors' trapped squirrels in his secret-recipe burgoo—no one could figure out that "nutty" taste.)

Another St. Louisan took his trapped squirrel down to the one-acre garage beside the Arch and released it there. With everyone trapping and releasing squirrels into neighboring municipalities, is it any wonder that Mr. Squirrel crossed home plate at Busch Stadium?

How the hate relationship with squirrels turned into a love relationship with the Rally Squirrel will probably be short-lived. So as you "root, root, root for the home team," re-connect with your "inner" squirrel. It is a unique, plucky, and endearing example of life in The Lou and our World Series mascot!

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