Curiously bold squirrel climbs man's leg in New Orleans

Sept. 15 (UPI) -- A New Orleans man out for a walk with his elderly mother captured video of his encounter with an unusually bold squirrel that insisted on climbing his body.

The video shows the squirrel bounding toward the sidewalk toward the man and his 90-year-old mother Sunday in a residential neighborhood.

The squirrel insistently jumps on the man's boot and begins to climb his leg.

The man said the squirrel had sniffed him moments earlier.

"We stopped and [a] squirrel walked over and sniffed my work boot," the man wrote.

"It appeared that it wanted to climb up my leg, so we walked on," he wrote. "I looked back and squirrel was following about 60 feet behind us. I was curious so I asked my mom to wait while I video. As the video shows, the squirrel walked up to my boot and that's when I have second thoughts about having it climb up my leg. The squirrel was quicker."

The video shows the man drop his phone as he pulls his shirt over his head to get the squirrel off his body.

"That's when it climbed up to my mom's shoulder. That's her scream you hear," the man wrote.

The man and his mother escaped the encounter without any bites or scratches.

"We weren't injured, but about 1 1/2 hours later, 4 other people were attacked by the same squirrel. One person went to the ER with bites on their arm and one man was bitten on the leg and is currently getting rabies shots to be safe," he wrote.