A mischievous but highly cute squirrel has been freed by firefighters after getting stuck in the gap of a manhole cover, in what seems to be an ever more regular occurrence. 

Dortmund squirrel gets stuck in manhole

A woman in Dortmund phoned the emergency services last week after she spotted a distressed red squirrel trapped in a manhole cover on the pavement. She had initially tried to help the squirrel to freedom herself but her efforts had proven unsuccessful since the critter was so panicked and was trying to take a bite out of her hands.

While waiting for the fire brigade to arrive the woman covered the squirrel with a scarf to try and calm it down. But once the emergency services arrived, the persistent squirrel continued on the defence. “[The removal] turned out to be quite complicated, as the squirrel was uncooperative,” the fire department explained.

The squirrel’s grumpy mood prevailed and once the creature was freed unharmed, it scampered off straight into the nearest tree without saying “tausend Dank”.

A squirrel with a hole in its heart

The squirrels of Dortmund seem to have an insatiable curiosity for manholes, because this isn’t the first time such an event has occurred in the German city. A similar case put the emergency services to work back in 2019, when a squirrel poking its little head through the manhole cover had to be sedated, removed and then treated for minor injuries. A rather plump sewer rat was also recently the victim of such city traps.

But for now, the suspicion of it being the same squirrel can neither be confirmed nor denied. “Whether it was the same squirrel that had to be freed from the same situation four years ago could not be clarified," the fire brigade explained to Deutsche Welle.

Thumb image credit: Feuerwehr Dortmund / CC-BY-4