Your video, Squirrel Diving Onto Bird Feeder, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Hokey Smoke! A distant descendant of Rocky the Flying Squirrel perchance?

Stabilized http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e_A0n471ow from http://www.reddit.com/r/squirrels/comments/2y1eir/drunk_squirrel_had_too_many_crabapples/cp5otxx

Go home squirrel; you're drunk...

Congratulations! Your video, Squirrel has a little too much, has reached the #1 spot in the current Top 15 New Videos listing. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish but you managed to pull it off. For your contribution you have been awarded 2 Power Points.

This achievement has earned you your "Golden One" Level 5 Badge!

We had a squirrel behave a bit like this in our yard a few years ago. It kept trying and failing to climb a tree, couldn't get more than a foot off the ground without falling off backwards. We happened to know someone who volunteers at a local wildlife rescue center, so I put on some thick gloves and grabbed it in a nice soft towel, then put it in a cat carrier. A few days later we heard back that it had made a full recovery, and they suspected it was drunk. Turns out that when doing some home renovation my father in law had moved our compost bin slightly, but not all of the compost that it was covering. We assume the squirrel got into some old fruit that had fermented and got good and tore up.

Your video, Squirrel has a little too much, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

@radx

As I mentioned in our previous conversations, my expectation is that once significant structural reform goes through, all the things I talked about before - much of the debt will be forgiven to speed up recovery for Greece and the rest of Europe. If that's not the case, then I agree that the policy was misguided. But it's the whole issue of trust again. Debt forgiveness certainly won't come before the fact, especially when a country like Germany is the main decision maker.

Putting that in perspective, I still think Merkel is broadly making the politically realistic best of a bad situation. I mean Merkel herself, from what I have read, is facing not insignificant opposition from a euro-skeptic right. Suppose she were more bold in funding Greece, was thrown out of office, and the policy abruptly reversed, what would that accomplish?

I can't speak to the specifics, but all those examples you mention of corruption and/or bad policy throughout the austerity process do not sound good. I have no doubt there were instances of malpractice or favoritism, and I hope if they are credible, they are investigated. I can only really argue on the merits of the broad intentions of the policy.

I would agree that the general attitude towards the Greeks being lazy and reaping what they sowed is unjustified. As an example, public sector workers did enjoy unjustified job security and there was a generously low retirement age compared to the rest of Europe. But much of the population didn't benefit from that early retirement or work in the public sector. From memory, actually measures like hours worked per capita were roughly in line or higher than the rest of Europe.

But unfortunately the brunt of the repercussions are borne by the populace who at best are responsible for not demanding more from their politicians because like mentioned before, the beneficiaries have emigrated and squirreled their ill gotten money away.

*quality *promote

SQUIRRELS!!!!

Your video, Tame squirrel, man's best friend., has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Squirrel!

-scheherazade

Your video, A squirrel nabbed his GoPro and carried it up a tree, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

At what point is the squirrel 'drowning'? He jumps into the water and is heroically trying to _swim_ upstream a bit, away from the large beast attacking him. If the guy had just left him alone and the squirrel happened to not be able to swim upstream then the squirrel would have swam the other direction. There's no 'drowning' involved here. Definitely it's swimming, not drowning.

What I said was mostly in jest, but I will entertain my learned colleague's well-reasoned arguments with a response.

"Squirrel fella didn't know what was going on"? That's right. He didn't. He didn't know the intentions of the human, other than his general instinct of "stay away from non-squirrels." His fear of him was totally justified.

Deus Ex Machina? There was no unexpected intervention which led to a happy ending here, that is my point. The squirrel expected the guy to grab him, he just didn't want him to. My point is that if the guy had kept on riding down the river, the squirrel would have been fine. But for his interference, the squirrel wouldn't have been drowning. His actions were negligent. His actions caused a situation of peril for that squirrel. If the squirrel had jumped toward the man and entered the calm part of the river and failed to swim, I might agree that intervention would have been necessary. Instead, the squirrel jumped in the exact opposite direction of the person, likely fearing for his life and choosing the most direct escape route, thus dooming himself. But he wouldn't have jumped that way if the guy hadn't been there. We can't know where he would have jumped, but I doubt it would have been in the most violent part of the river. Animal instincts aren't dumb, otherwise that squirrel would have been long dead.

Guy saved his life? Did he? Did we see a drowned squirrel swimming away from the rock before the guy even got there? Was there something that I missed in this video? Was the squirrel in imminent danger of being eaten by a vicious squirrel-eating miniature river-swimming orca? My point is the guy put the squirrel in danger simply by being there. Even after the squirrel jumped, it is not known that the squirrel would have drowned if the man had simply swam away. We assume because we think that squirrels are shitty swimmers.

Self-righteous? Did I say that I don't touch wildlife? Did I say that I might not have done the same thing in his position? No. I am simply saying that we should all abide by the general principle that wild animals do not need our help. Our interactions with them should be constrained to watching them pass and keeping them out of our areas when necessary and shooting and eating them when legal and not deleterious to the species. None of us should assume that our interactions with wildlife are anything other than a semi-masturbatory effort that serves the single purpose of entertaining us and making us feel good with little to no actual understanding of the animal's position.

Fuck you dude, squirrel fella didn't know what was going on. Deus ex machina, he was in danger and now he's safe, that's all he knows. Guy saved its life. What is your net contribution to the fauna of earth today? Bet he's one up on you, you self righteous arse.