Action Line: Is squished squirrel real?

The photo accompanying this column is gross, I know.

But, depending on who you ask, it may not even be real, so let the uncertainty comfort you.

Barry LaPoint, a sports photographer for the University of Northern Colorado, took this photo May 1 on U.S. 34 bypass by the Greeley Mall. He forwarded it on to a reporter at the Tribune who sent it to me.

For the last couple weeks, I've been trying to figure out if it's real or not.

Survey says? Maybe.

For one, the photo doesn't look digitally altered. I know a little Adobe Photoshop, and to get something that looks like this would be very difficult to fake. The lighting is the same on both the squirrel and the ground around it.

To further prove the point that this is a real photo, LaPoint and Tribune photographer Eric Bellamy both said they saw the squirrel with their own eyes, so the photo itself is not fake.

But Mindy Crane, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Transportation, said she spent a couple weeks talking to different crews about if they thought it was real or not and if it was staged.

Crane said everyone she talked to at CDOT think someone placed the squirrel on the yellow line after crews striped the surface.

CDOT contractors, who were restriping the U.S. 34 bypass recently, don't intentionally harm any animal that may get in their path, but they may not realize sometimes when something happens, Crane said.

These striping machines also have an air gun that clears debris away from near the paint sprayer, which sits a foot above the ground, Crane said. The air gun is not powerful enough to move roadkill from near the sprayer, Crane said.

But the fact that the squirrel carcass isn't squished and several other factors make CDOT workers unsure if the squirrel wasn't planted there by some pranksters.

First, Crane said, there is little paint under the squirrel. Second, the sprayer is on a track, so if it paints over something, the line would be more "squiggly" than it looks in the photo.

Crane added that the paint on the squirrel doesn't go all the way to the edge of the squirrel's body and that the yellow line on the squirrel is too thin to be done by the contractor's striper.

After talking with several people, results of a non-scientific poll were mixed. Some think it's staged, others don't.

What is certain is that the urban legend of the painted-over squirrel grows.