Feisty Squirrels Compete Against Each Other in Mark Rober’s ‘Backyard Squirrelympics 3.0’

After the squirrels of his backyard conquered his challenging obstacle course in 2020 and 2021, former NASA engineer and entertaining science vlogger Mark Rober decided to have his feisty sciuridae visitors race against one another in an event called the “Backyard Squirrelympics 3.0 – The Summer Games”.

I gave up on trying to battle my squirrels… but what if they battled each other?

As in previous years, Rober hilariously narrated the action of the squirrels, whose names are Rick, Marty, Augustine, and Phat Gus. Also making a run for it was a tenacious rat named Phat Tail. The course consisted of seven distinct events, including a long jump, high jump, spinning balance beam, and pneumatic trap doors. Rober also used a bit of creative liberty as he looked into the origins of each squirrel.

…Phat Gus grew up in a rougher area of the neighborhood called hubcap Hills…without money to buy new things they  ere really good about repurposing whatever they could scavenge but what they lacked in material possessions they made up for in quality family time …Phat Gus’s sister Augustine and she’s the second member of Team hubcap Hills. …the other two contenders we have are Rick and Marty, who you know from the previous two years. But what you might not know is they grew up in Walnut Estates in a nice Japanese maple down the street .

The final contest ended with Phat Gus and Marty at the high jump, where Augustine and Rick had been disqualified earlier. Marty made the jump. Phat Gus did not. It appeared that Marty had won…

 I guess that means Marty gets the gold and that puts Walnut Estates to four gold medals making them the official winners of the Backyard games. So there you have it I mean you could see that they’re ecstatic and rightfully so. It was a hard fought and well-earned battle. Wait a second, I’m getting some breaking news. Stand by….

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