Originally published at: Clever squirrel outsmarts bobcat in hilarious chase scene (video) | Boing Boing
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Reminds me of the classic Sc-Fi story from Arthur C. Clarke called Hide and Seek.
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When I was a kid we always had a dog or two, and lots of oak trees full of grey squirrels. A squirrel would feed near the base of a tree until the dog(s) spotted it, then scurry up the trunk and sit prominently on the first limb, nibbling an acorn, while the dogs went nuts barking at it, totally focused.
Meanwhile, behind the dog, another squirrel would quietly edge down another tree and feed in the grass, until the dog noticed it. It would pull the same escape … while the first squirrel eased back down and fed for a while. They’d do this for hours, and sometimes several squirrels were in on it. The dogs never figured it out, and later the rodents did it to Mom’s empty-nest dog at another house, so the strategy must have been widely known.
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Are there short-haired bobcats? That thing looked weird.
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Darn if I wasn’t just thinking of that very story.
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The music on that video should have been this:
Southern USA bobcats don’t need the full fluffy coats the northern ones do - they look oddly leggy and skinny in comparison.
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Yeah, that thing looked downright freaky, like it had mange or something. Guess that’s what you get when the expectation is “huge-pawed fluffball” but the reality is “skinny-legged, stumpy-tailed gremlin” 
Didn’t know there were different bobcat varieties like that though, interesting!
Our family cat was a nimble climber by cat standards, and would chase squirrels up trees. But he was absolutely no match for them once he was up there. They’d run out to the end of a thin branch and jump to the next tree. If he followed, the branch would bend and point straight at the ground. One afternoon I looked up from my desk in time to see him tumbling end over end toward the ground - a bent branch must’ve had some spring to it.
I stepped out to check on him; he fell from a decent height. He was wandering about with that perfectly innocent look cats get when they don’t want you to ask too many questions.
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