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Locals in a California city are on edge after a series of animal attacks.
The perpetrator, however, isn’t the sea lions, sharks or mountain lions you might expect in that part of the world.
Instead, the violent attacker is an aggressive squirrel.
Residents of San Rafael, about 20 miles north of San Francisco, have started placing posters and issuing warnings online about the aggressive animal, which has sent two people to hospital with their injuries.
They’ve been warned that at least five people have been attacked by a ‘very mean squirrel’ that ‘comes out of nowhere’.
The poster, featuring a picture of a squirrel mid-leap, also insists that the warnings are ‘not a joke’.
Joan Heblack told local media that she was walking down the street when the creature came out of nowhere, attacking her leg.
She said: ‘It clamped onto my leg. The tail was flying up here. I was like, “Get it off me, get off me!”.’
Isabel Campoy was walking in the Lucas Valley neighbourhood, the same area as Joan, when she was also attacked by the squirrel.
It launched itself from the ground towards her face and latched onto her arm, she said, leaving her bleeding.
A local humane society said they haven’t had any reports of squirrel attacks since mid-September.
Lisa Bloch, a volunteer at Marin Humane, said it will work with the state to remove the animal if it starts attacking people again.
She warned: ‘We’ve seen this kind of behavior before. It’s almost always because someone has been feeding the animal.’
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Lisa also said squirrels very rarely get rabies and haven’t been known to transmit it, reassuring that those bitten are not at risk of catching the deadly viral infection.
But despite this, she recommends that people should never feed wildlife – lest they get hungry and come to seek out their next meal themselves.
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