So there we were, biking along the northern segment of the Dutchess Rail Trail, when a squirrel scampered up a fencepost a few hundred feet ahead of us and struck a classic tree-rat pose: standing up atop the post, tail arched behind, front paws together.
As we rolled closer, the squirrel noticed us and, as squirrels are wont to do, panicked.
*Must* *run* *away*
Squirrels tend to escape up the nearest tree, which works perfectly with most predators. In this case, though, the squirrel was already as high as it could get on the post and there were no trees within jumping distance.
Decision time: can’t run up, can’t escape to the side, must not run toward the threat.
*Must* *run* *away*
So the critter lit off along the top rail, hurdling over the protruding fenceposts in a dead run, as fast as its little legs could carry it.
Which, as it turned out, was just over 15 mph. We stopped pedaling and coasted, but this section is slightly down-grade and we didn’t slow very much.
The thing was running at my eye level, about five feet to my left, and kept pace with us for maybe a dozen fenceposts. Finally it decided this tactic wasn’t working and dove off the fence into the bushes beside the trail.
Squirrels must produce adrenaline like I produce saliva.
And I really, really need a helmet camera…
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
Comments
13 responses to “Experimental Determination of Squirrel Sprint Speed”
There are a wide variety of bike cameras out there, with the GoPro apparently being one of the best. (your other regular commenter david and I have a friend whose homemade cyclecam, in 1999-ish, nearly caught him on fire when the power supply overheated in his panniers.)
I spend a lot of time riding on cycle paths in floodplains, so the scenario is: river, trees, path, fence, suburban blight. As such, the squirrel, on the fence, starts running desperately to avoid being caught and eaten, and when it’s obvious that flat-out sprinting isn’t going to work, the squirrel looks for a tree… which is on the *other* side of the path. Which is within squirrel-jumping-distance, so it does, and ends up passing between the front wheel and the handlebars on my bike. Which is a good way to make squirrel pepperoni and break a collarbone. Even when they’re on the ground, they zig and zag, and avoidance on my part usually ends up with them zigging back straight into my wheel, which is again highly collarboneopathic, so — an advantage of upright bikes and a history of observed trials riding — I sprint directly at the squirrel and if it runs, it runs away, and if it doesn’t, I bunnyhop it.
That’s a lot trickier with the Canada geese that infest the paths, especially when they have babies and think, momentarily, that they can successfully defend their space against 70 kilos of onrushing cyclist, coz, dude, it’s hard to clear a goose with a hop (but, thankfully, possible.) (Also short dogs on leashes, when owner walks down far right-hand side of path, and dog down far-left-hand side.)
I clear the way with such shenanigans, and N, riding behind me on her recumbent, doesn’t have to worry, but “look, Natasha, is Goose und Skvirrel!” is a regular cry in our bike rides.
the GoPro apparently being one of the best
I like what I’ve seen of those, but the dorkosity of riding with a blocky camera strapped to my helmet is offputting, even for me… and that’s saying a lot.
short dogs on leashes
I trust you’ve noticed that if you ding your bike bell, the owner doesn’t notice, but if you remark “Passing on your left!” in a somewhat-louder-than-conversational voice, the owner gets all startled and affronted?
Mutter. Grumble. Similar remarks…
This has only happened once, but it was glorious in its irritation capacity: two people were walking together and I said “On your left!” and went to pass, and the one person was startled and affronted at hearing that, and the other was startled and affronted at *not* having heard me when I passed her.
I think I need an aeolian harp on my bike, or a playing card in the spokes with an amp on it. And this is why, when I’m in a hurry to actually get somewhere on time, I ride in traffic rather than on bike paths.
a playing card in the spokes
Yesssss!
You clearly have a better grade of pedestrian than we do; around here, if you cry out “On your left!” approximately 50% will interpret that as “Move left!”.
Hmm. I can’t figure out how to thread replies on the new style…
The threading is supposed to be automagic when you click the Reply button on the comment-to-be-replied-to, but there’s an upper limit of 5 levels right now. I think that’s working right, as I do see indentation. However, there may be some interaction between the new theme, ad blocking, script disabling, and who knows what else you’ve got in effect.
Ah! Try hovering over the title bar for the comment. That seems to magic the buttons into visibility. What makes them vanish, I cannot tell.
Given the amount of spam I’ve been deleting lately, up-armoring your browser makes a lot of sense: the spammers must succeed in getting posts on some blog somewhere!
“helmet camera…”
http://www.google.com/search&q=video+eyewear+recorder
The box I have here in hand says “Video Eyewear Recorder”, has no other useful identifying information.
I’ve been wearing them on the trail all summer. Only one single person has even noticed.
Hope to post those trail videos over the winter.
Battery wears out, now, after about 8 miles. Got about 15 miles when I first started using them.
Software in them is buggy. Only way for a reliable recording is to do a fresh format before each use, of the internal 8G memory card.
Picks up to much wind noise while moving for the mic to be useful.
Only one single person has even noticed.
The others just run away without saying anything? [Grin…]
That said, it seems the smaller pocket cameras:
One of these days, I’ll move off dead center and get something done…
I’m irked that the SD card consortium has defined some nice rules for formatting the cards so they’ll last long and sustain good transfer rates – and make those rules a trade secret! You can download a formatting tool (for windoze only) that implements them, but that’s hardly useful to the sort of folks bright enough to care about page boundaries and cluster alignment in SD cards!
Money talks and the freedom to tinker doesn’t, alas.
SD cards have become commodity items by now, so you’re supposed to just use ’em up and throw ’em out. Having to do that irks Our Kind, though, doesn’t it?
Perhaps attach some open-cell foam over the mic to address wind noise? I’ve had luck with that in the past.
That explains why I can’t do it, then — I don’t allow scripting, for the obvious reasons. I guess you’ll just have to put up with my unthreaded replies — or delete them :)
Gosh, if you can’t trust WordPress, which website can you trust?
None, I think, and quite rightly. [Sigh…]