Girl’s attempt to rescue squirrel from pool hilariously backfires

Retrieving nut huggers from the pool never ended so badly.

A Texas girl’s attempt to save a poor squirrel went hilariously awry after the rodent leaped at her face, as seen in a viral YouTube video from June 7.

“I called my daughter outside to see a squirrel trapped in my granddaughter’s kiddie pool,” the unnamed person tells Viral Hog of the nutty incident in Lumberton. The voice added that being an “animal lover,” she “had to attempt a rescue.”

In the clip, an unnamed girl in red can be seen attempting to free the floundering critter from the water while an off-camera voice warns “don’t touch him.” She almost succeeds at lifting the waterlogged rodent out using a chair, but the squirrel doubles back and leaps onto its rescuer’s body near her face, causing her to shriek with surprise. The clip concludes with the screaming girl fleeing the pool while the videographer guffaws hysterically in the background.

“The squirrel was not quite as grateful as she had hoped!” the voice says of the ill-fated rescue bid.

Fortunately, she came away from the incident with only a scratch on her arm and, “after a cautious second attempt, she did indeed rescue the squirrel,” according to Viral Hog.

Needless to say, viewers are going nuts over her botched tree-hopper retrieval.

“This is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time,” exclaimed one Facebook fan of her epic fail.

“Just put the chair down and it would have been able to climb out,” suggested one YouTube viewer in retrospect.

This isn’t the first time a squirrel has made online waves for its unpredictable nature. Last month, one of the hairy Houdinis went viral after navigating a “ninja warrior” obstacle course designed by a former engineer for NASA.