Quote Originally Posted by Aggie_Ama View Post
Or Kamikaze squirrels that run into/in front you. That happened either to someone on here or one of my husband's old teammates. Snapped the fork, tacoed the wheel and the poor squirrel died too.
That is happening more and more frequently now that people have fewer and fewer spokes on their wheels. It's not easy for a squirrel to get caught in a moving wheel with 32 spokes- they tend to just bounce off. Not so with wheels with fewer spokes- they can get partway through the wheel gaps and then spun up and crushed in the fork. My DH and I refer to the modern few-spoke racing type wheels as "squirrel catchers".

We have 32 spokes on all our wheels.
I had a squirrel run smack into my front wheel spokes from the side last year...the spinning wheel flung him up and over my head, but he didn't get caught in my wheel. I stopped my bike and looked back where the squirrel was lying in the middle of the road behind me. Then he got up, looked real confused, and then ran off! close call!