*Crickets*

In a rural areas, we know what happens to wild animals. Old, and/or sick squirrels, raccoons, and sometimes woodchucks act like that. We see that kind of thing when they’re active. In a deciduous forest there’s not anything to ferment and get them drunk.

@mena had a good post.

My brother is a veterinarian and I’m waiting for him to get back to me on this.

I’ll let you know what he says.

There’s a lesson in this: clean up your yards and get rid of those old pumpkins. The squirrel obviously didn’t intend to get bombed. All it wanted to do was take in as much nutrition as it could for the Winter. Getting this sick-intoxicated just before it gets seriously cold does not help its chances for survival.

To explain the Obama comment, I had just seen the South Park episode poking fun at some of the post election celebrations, so the squirrel reminded me of that. I’m not anti-Obama. I voted for the guy.

Ty, don’t drop dead, but, you know, if you don’t like what another person posts and it’s not an arguable issue or point, just ignore it.

Elephants don’t get drunk off the Marula tree berries either…
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1219_051219_drunk_elephant.html
I, on the other hand, turned our African trip into the Amarula Sundowner Tour of 2006. Especially since in Africa, the continent Ms Palin, and specifically Uganda and Kenya (countries Ms Palin), Amarula is very very cheap. Around 1/4 to 1/5 the price we pay in Oz. We even filled our pockets with the tiny little freebie bottles when we flew… thank you Kenya Airways. Ah, sitting around the camp fire in the evenings listening to the lions roar, the hippos splashing, the mozzies buzzing, and sipping on warm Amarula.

Once had a pet budgie that would always try to drink out of drinking glasses left unguarded, he nearly drowned a couple of times.
For some reason he had got out of his cage when my parents had a party and he got a tiny nip of whiskey. He looked like he had burned himself and started sneezing, flew strait back to his cage and drank most of the water. After that, he was so drunk that he could not climb back on his perch, so he just fell asleep down in a corner in the bottom of his cage.
He never drank from a glass again.

Well an adult human weighting 150lbs is drunk after consuming 2 drinks of 80 proof hard liquor or 1.2oz of alcohol. A squirrel weights only 1-2 lbs so call it 1.5lbs would only need to consume 0.012 oz of alcohol to get the same effect that’s less then one tenth of a teaspoon, not a whole lot of alcohol.

I remember as a kid seeing Jays get drunk off of Pyracantha berries that has fermented, and not just one or two but whole flocks would show up and put on a bender and pass out under the bushes.

I’m skeptical about rotting pumpkins developing enough alcohol to get a squirrel drunk.

Last year, I watched a squirrel with falling-off-the-tree behavior like this from my office window. It was gathering acorns but couldn’t sit up to hold the nut in its paws. It would fall over but continue eating while lying on its side. I saw it occasionally over a span of a week. I wasn’t thinking drunk (no pumpkins or bars in the neighborhood), I was thinking disease, parasites, poison, etc.

Robins that migrate to Florida gorge on the fermented berries of a the Pepper Bush to the point that they cannot fly.

Some years ago a train carrying corn derailed in northern Wyoming, creating six foot drifts of corn kernels along the tracks. Bears came a few weeks later and sought out the now “corn liquor.” Several were killed as they lounged contentedly on the RR tracks. The railroad company sprayed the corn with diesel fuel; the bears just dug deeper.

And once, to my astonishment, I was able to play roughly with some honeybees that were showing highly focused attention to a thistle blossom that actually smelled (subtly) of alcohol! They were literally stinger deep among the florets and happily climbed my finger and fell off repeatedly.

I’m almost tempted to say, “Tell me someone ain’t lookin’ out for us here below!” [/wrywit]