Suicide squirrel in opera-hating kamikaze bike spoke mangle

By Smartalix Thursday September 7, 2006

This has got to be one of the best headlines ever.

A Helsinki squirrel dived into the bicycle wheel of passing opera singer Esa Ruuttunen, hospitalising him and killing itself.

The squirrel – apparently not an opera fan – ran headlong at Ruuttunen’s spokes. Alarmed, the bicycling bass baritone hit the deck.

As Mel Brooks once said, “tragedy is when I cut my finger; comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die”.

4 Comments

Rick says:

9/7/2006 at 7:58 am

No joke. This happened to a very close friend of mine. He was, admittedly, a cyclist and spent a lot of time on his bike. But, it seemed the squirrel was confused and raced out too go in front of him and mis-timed it. My friend actually crashed, managed to repair his bike (and self) and rode the rest of the race wtih the now severed tail fo the squirrel hanging out the pouch of his cycle uniform. Seems a bit sick to me, but I’m sure it did wonders for the psychological side of the race.
Matthew says:

9/7/2006 at 11:13 am

poor squirly could have used a
Matthew says:

9/7/2006 at 11:14 am

try 2…

http://www.squirrelman7.com/
Matthew says:

9/7/2006 at 11:15 am

think I forgot the close a.

my bad.