{"id":740584,"date":"2026-07-03T09:14:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T09:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/740584\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T09:14:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T09:14:15","slug":"kamikaze-squirrel-goes-flying-in-cannon-blast-for-america-250","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/740584\/","title":{"rendered":"Kamikaze squirrel goes flying in cannon blast for America 250"},"content":{"rendered":"

He took escape plans to nutty new heights.<\/p>\n

An acrobatic squirrel in Brooklyn got so spooked when soldiers fired a ceremonial cannon Thursday morning, it hurled itself off a telephone pole \u2014 and lived to tell the tale, according to wild footage and officials.<\/p>\n

The freaked-out furball threw itself into the air kamikaze-style and plunged dozens of feet after Army members blasted the cannon to welcome a German warship at Fort Hamilton <\/a>in Brooklyn during America 250 celebrations ahead of the Fourth of July, military officials said.<\/p>\n

\"squirrel\"The spooked squirrel hurled itself off a phone pole after the cannon blast. USAG Fort Hamilton<\/p>\n

\"squirrel\"Army members blasted the cannon to welcome a German navy ship FGS Sachsen. USAG Fort Hamilton<\/p>\n

\u2018\u201c\u2019I didn\u2019t sign up for this,\u2019\u2014 This squirrel, probably,\u201d USAG Fort Hamilton hilariously posted, along with the footage, on Facebook Thursday.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSorry for the early boom, Brooklyn! We promise it\u2019s for a good cause. (The squirrel remains unconvinced.),\u201d it added.<\/p>\n

The video quickly went viral with more than 1.2 million views\u00a0\u2014 and observers chalking it up to noise disturbance in a nutshell.<\/p>\n

In the footage, the critter is shown going full action movie as it furiously flails its tail while falling after the unwanted wake-up call \u2014 landing on the back of one nearby soldier and scampering off before another blast is shot off.<\/p>\n

The German navy ship, FGS Sachsen, sailed into town as part of the Grand Parade of Sail to celebrate America\u2019s 250th birthday, according to military officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe squirrel and Soldier were both unharmed, just startled,\u201d USAG Fort Hamilton said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He took escape plans to nutty new heights. An acrobatic squirrel in Brooklyn got so spooked when soldiers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":740585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[57362,1147,11827,5871,79,194,201],"class_list":["post-740584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-america-250","tag-animals","tag-army","tag-metro","tag-science","tag-us-news","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=740584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/740584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/740585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=740584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=740584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=740584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}