Posted on 06/02/2009 10:06:44 AM PDT by freespirited
PORT HURON, Mich. (AP) — A brazen squirrel has been grabbing small American flags placed in a cemetery and carrying them up to its nest, which now looks as if it's bedecked in bunting.
Every Memorial Day, volunteers place the flags next to the graves of about 965 veterans buried at Mount Hope Cemetery on the city's north side. The flags were undisturbed during a Mass held Monday.
The next day, the Times Herald reported, workers at the cemetery about 55 miles northeast of Detroit noticed several wooden staffs were still in the ground, but the flags themselves had been torn off — leaving a few scraps of red, white and blue.
Cemetery workers were stumped until the mystery unfurled in front of superintendent Ron Ceglarek's eyes. He watched a squirrel detach a flag stapled to a staff and carry it up a tree to a waiting squirrel building a nest.
Ceglarek watched it happen about a dozen times.
"He plucks them right off," Ceglarek said. "If I didn't see it, and I didn't follow the squirrel, I would have never believed it. ... It looked like he had a little bandanna in his mouth."
Red, white and blue fabric is draped over the branches around the nest, about 45 feet up a spruce tree.
Ceglarek said the cemetery normally keeps the flags at the gravesites until Flag Day on June 14, but they'll likely have to come out of the ground early this year to thwart the bushy-tailed burglar.
"Maybe they are trying to tell us it is going to be a hard winter," Ceglarek said. "Why use leaves when you can get flags?"
Wow, it really has gotten bad if the newspaper doesn’t have the money for a camera. This is a story that screams for a photo. I hope someone gets a picture of this, better yet, a video of the squirrel taking the flags.
A few summers ago, I mistakenly left my garage door open, and a bird built a nest on top of my leaf blower attachment. What was unusual about the nest was the bird use pieces of scotch tape on the outside of the nest. Where the tape came from, I'll never know.
Cool. A patriotic squirrel.
Rats with fluffy tails. A pellet gun works nicely.
The squirrel is showing more respect for the flag than Obama’s weatherman/terrorist “just-a-neighbor” is ....
That squirrel has more patriotic feeling than most ‘rats.
Squirrel just exhibited about 5000% more patriotism than O-hole ever has or will.
ping
Ugh
Yes, I was wondering whether to call the squirrel a vandal or a patriot, but I lean toward patriot.
Good morning ladies and gents. Flag-o-Ping.
That's the sound I make when they chew up my property and eat the seed I put out for songbirds.
*squirrel ping*
See? Just goes to show that even a squirrel has more patriotism than Zero or your average Congress critter.
Mrs. Slim left out some fuzzy cloth for squirrel nesting material (and birds too)... They got a bit too used to it and ate the legs out of a pair of my jeans that I was drying by hanging on the back of a patio chair.
Port Huron, MI.
Port Huron was the birthplace of the ultra radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) which also involved Obortion’s buddies Bill Ayres and Bernadine Doehrn. SDS’s founding statement of “principles” is the Port Huron Statement (1962) written by Tom Hayden, the former Mr. Jane Fonda.
Well, PE I think this is your most unusual flag ping! LOL!
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