Vicious Squirrel Attacks Rattle Rego Park Residents

REGO PARK, QUEENS — Rego Park residents are complaining that a pack of pugnacious squirrels are attacking them unprovoked.

At least five people in the neighborhood have been bitten or scratched by squirrels on 65th Road and 65th Drive within the last month, according to residents who spoke to Patch.

They include Micheline Frederick, who had to go to the hospital after a squirrel attack so vicious that it left her hands and arms covered with bites — and her snowy front yard stained with blood.

"He was angry and he was vicious," Frederick told Patch of the Dec. 21 attack. "This was more than just a bite. This thing was fighting with me."

Frederick said she was holding her front door open for two movers when the squirrel ran up to her and scurried up her leg. She threw the squirrel off of her, but it pounced back onto her and started biting and scratching her. She bled so much that the snow in her front yard turned red.

The attack left her pinky finger "pretty chewed up" and her hand bruised black and blue for days, she said. She had at least eight bites, prompting physicians at a nearby urgent care center to send her to the emergency room for rabies shots.

“Because I had so many, they wanted to be safe rather than sorry,” she said.

The NYC Department of Health says squirrels are rarely infected with rabies. Since the agency started tracking New York City rabies cases in 1992, it has never identified a case of a squirrel with the disease.

With rabies being an unlikely, but not impossible, explanation, Rego Park residents say the city has declined to intervene.

Residents said they have complained about the squirrels to 311, which takes reports on animals infected with rabies or other complaints of wild animals, as well as 911, which New Yorkers are supposed to call if a wild animal is "currently threatening or endangering people" — all to no avail. Operators told the frustrated residents they would have to figure the issue out for themselves.

"The NYC Health Department received a complaint about an aggressive squirrel in Rego Park and advised the property owner to hire a New York State licensed trapper," Department of Health spokesperson Michael Lanza said in an emailed statement to Patch.

But city health officials blamed rabies for a seemingly similar case in 2017, when an "unusually aggressive" squirrel attacked at least five people in Prospect Park in Brooklyn, the New York Times reported.

Rego Park resident Vinati Singh told Patch there seem to be at least three squirrels that are acting "erratically and aggressively." Her husband was attacked two weeks ago.

"Clearly, it’s an unsafe situation for us," Singh said.

Singh's husband was attacked while walking up to their home on 65th Drive. He was in the backyard when a squirrel jumped on his foot and tried to scamper up his leg, Singh said.

He shook his leg to kick the squirrel off. Then, the riled-up rodent climbed atop a bicycle outside their house and jumped onto him, teeth and claws bared.

“As far as he could tell, it was completely unprovoked," Singh said.

Singh didn't personally witness the attack, but she saw the aggression for herself the following week, when she caught a squirrel gnawing on the mailbox to the side of her front door.

She started recording a video from inside her home, which showed the squirrel lunging at her on the other side of the glass door. She screamed.

Aggressive squirrels are no anomaly in New York City. Last year, New Yorkers were warned to not feed the squirrels in Rockefeller Park in Battery Park City, after reports that the rodents were becoming overly aggressive as they went after food.

Frederick and Singh emphasized that is not the case in Rego Park. Neither Frederick nor Singh's husband was trying to feed the squirrels or otherwise interact with them when they were attacked. They've even seen squirrels chase their neighbors down the street, unprovoked.

Frederick, who has lived in Rego Park for more than 20 years, said it is the first time she has seen anything like this happen in the neighborhood.

"It’s definitely not normal squirrel behavior," she said. “Digging in your yard and moving your tulip bulbs? Yes. Attacking people? No."