Beware of . . . squirrels?

As I was driving home from the PX this afternoon, I was half listening to NPR when something caught my attention. Apparently reports of vicious squirrels killing and eating a stray dog in a Russian park have been spreading across the internet. The speaker said that investigation has revealed that the report originated from a Russian tabloid known for its sensational stories. Given our familial interest in squirrels and other rodents, I just had to learn more.

This evening I turned to my trusty friend Google.com and typed in the search "squirrels attack dog." Bingo! There, as the very first hit, was an article from no less an authoritative source than BBC News--"Russian squirrel pack 'kills dog'":

A "big" stray dog was nosing about the trees and barking at squirrels hiding in branches overhead when a number of them suddenly descended and attacked, reports say.

"They literally gutted the dog," local journalist Anastasia Trubitsina told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.

"When they saw the men, they scattered in different directions, taking pieces of their kill away with them."

The speaker on NPR reassured the host that this news article had come from the Russian equivalent of our supermarket tabloids, and I came home prepared to break the vicious squirrel news here and compare Komsomolskaya Pravda to the National Enquirer. Something just didn't feel right though, so I decided to investigate further. I found a couple of articles that accused Komsomolskaya Pravda of occasional yellow journalism but nothing that would suggest them to be a consistent source of UFO sightings.

I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep tonight until I found the original article. Do you have any idea how tricky it is to do a google search in Russian, even if you did manage to graduate with a degree in Russian Studies back in the mid-1980s? It's hard if for no other reason than I don't have a cyrillic keyboard, let alone know the word for "squirrel." I persevered though for you, my readers (all 15 of you!), and I am happy to report that I was successful. You can read the article in Russian here. OR you can read a snippet of the translation that I carefully prepared by pumping the Russian text through an online translating service:

People is going to arrange in a wood of an ambush on rodents

Above brothers our smaller local residents yet did not see such rough handling. In the center of settlement Lazo of area Dalnerechenskogo is a small wood: on its footpaths peasants go every day for work and home. That day on park three
lazovtsev walked. Nearby rezvilsja the homeless dog rushed between trees and oblaival black the squirrel, hidden on trees. Whether bark has bothered rodents, whether they too ogolodali, but is unexpected the whole flight squirrels have rushed on a poor mongrel.

"Excuse for a terrible detail, but they in literal sense gutted a dog," Anastasia Trubitsina, the correspondent of the newspaper Shock Front, has told to us about punishment according to eyewitnesses. People, seeing such horror, have rushed the dog on proceeds, but was late. The squirrel flight tore up the dog no more minutes. And when squirrels have seen men, have rushed in all directions, carrying away with itself slices of extraction.

News about the flown into a rage squirrels has quickly scattered on settlement. Now many inhabitants bypass a place of severe punishment by the party. Are afraid, that squirrels in a wood any more only nutlets gnaws. If they have attacked on large dog can and up to children who like to walk, reach here.

So Anastasia Trubitsina--quoted as a "local journalist" by the BBC--works for a newspaper called Shock Front. I couldn't find a website for Shock Front, but I'm thinking it's what one might call a "rag" if one knew how to say "rag" in Russian. I find it amazing that I, a blogging mom in Kentucky, can uncover that small detail when the great minds at BBC, all of whom probably have really cool British accents, couldn't.

It just goes to show you can't believe everything you read in the mainstream media. Which is too bad, because, damn . . . bloodthirsty squirrels. Wouldn't THAT have been something?