IT’S NUTS!

Roasting Californians Urged: Don’t Freak Out if You’re Seeing Flat Squirrels

Wildlife centers telling alarmed residents not to worry if they see the little fuzzy critters laying spread-eagle in the streets during historic heat wave.

Residents of Northern California have been told not to worry if they see a squirrel lying flat-out on the sidewalk—it’s probably just “splooting” to cope with the historic heat wave. The Bay Area has been enduring record highs with temperatures up to 107 F, and the squirrels are finding it as hard to handle as the humans. Alison Hermance of WildCare in San Rafael told SFGate the wildlife hospital had “been receiving lots of calls about hot animals, including concerns about squirrels ‘spread out flat.’” That's called splooting, or heat dumping—when animals spread themselves out flat so that as much of their body as possible is touching the ground. Squirrels do it in hot weather, as do bears and even dogs. The birds and the bees, however, do not.