Joe, I've seen 2 squirrels swimming. One on the Bass River, we first thought is was a snake..... but having never seen a hairy snake.... we soon realized it was a squirrel. It was comical! The second one we saw was on the Wareham River, and now that I think of it......it was no longer swimming.....it was sort-of floating.....doing the dead man's float......literally! (Ok, the dead squirrels Float?)
A few years ago my Parents saw a large Deer swimming off Dry Ledge in Buzzards Bay, that is about 1-2 miles from the nearest shoreline! Listening to the Wareham Harbor Patrol that afternoon, I got the feeling the deer didn't make it back to land. They pulled the body in later.
The guys in my club laughed like a son of a gun when they saw that squirrel swimming across the Taunton River down by Joe O'Connell's Marina, the widest part of the river. He looked comical too with his tail sticking up straight out of the water.
I've heard that the deer are always swimming to and from the Elizabeth Islands down the Cape.
Those islands are all loaded with deer. I used to wake up early on my boat in the "Frog Pond" of Cuttyhunk and paddle over to shore just to see the deer walking around the streets. Some lady used to feed them every morning and they'd show up on her porch every morning looking for a hand out. We loved Cuttyhunk. It was like going back in time.
It was hard to believe that the guy used to fly his plane into that pond. That last pic is their public library.
At the time, they had three students who attended their little school house which was part of the Berkley Ma school system.
They generated their own electricity with six of eight Detroit diesel engines, and their primary voltage was 440 Volts, all URD.
The head of the light dept was also the town police chief and I think he was a volunteer fireman. His name was Bill Jenkins and he wore a lot of different hats.
Like most islands, Cuttyhunk is loaded with Lyme Disease ticks.