This is an Ex-Squirrel

I know they're considered a pest, and they eat all the even-cuter Red squirrel's nuts, but no-one likes to see one of the little fella's come to any harm. Unfortunately I watched one expire today; I was walking Mishka back from his runabout in the park at lunchtime, and I saw this grey squirrel running across the road, 20 yards in front of us. He looked perfectly OK, and I was thinking I'll take Mishka in that direction, so he can try to "play" with it, although the little guys are always too fast and make it up the nearest tree before Mishka gets near them. As we crossed the road to the squirrels side, the squirrel crossed back, and as it was about to jump up the kerb on to the footpath, it just keeled over on its side, on the road against the kerb. It seemed a strange thing for a squirrel to do, so I watched to see what the next move was. Well, I saw its chest heave 5 or 6 times, like it was taking deep breaths, but each time the period between breaths was greater and greater, until after a minute or so I didn't see any more movement :-(
It had seemed to be moving freely enough as it crossed the road, but maybe it had been hit by a car and I just couldn't see if it was injured, but it seemed to die of shock or a heart attack. Nothing to do with Mishka I hasten to add, we'd not got within 20 yards of it. It was quite upsetting really, and not the kind of thing you want to see on a lovely autumnal day. I didn't go and have a closer look, I'm sqeamish like that, and Mishka would have grabbed it as his new fluffy toy.

Well, there was nothing I could have done for the little guy or girl, and it wasn't rolling around in agony, and I didn't see squirrel-blood anywhere, so maybe it was just old age and too many nuts. Maybe it had a nut allergy?