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Fat Bear Week has emerged as a beloved annual tradition at a national park in Alaska thanks to the massive mammals who get even bigger as they gear up for hibernation. Now, a new challenger has entered the arena in the form of “Fat Squirrel Week,” which has produced a winner who boxed out a field hailing from state parks in Texas.
In 2014, a ranger at Katmai National Park in Alaska dreamed up what was dubbed “Fat Bear Week,” an event that gave the public a chance to get familiar with the mammals as they prepared to hibernate for the winter and vote for the one Absolute Unit who stood out among the pack.
The winner of this year’s showdown, Chunk, overcame a broken jaw (and some negative publicity involving the murder of another bear’s cub) to win for the first time while receiving over 32,000 votes.
There’s no telling if another contest involving fat animals in Texas will end up achieving a similar level of popularity, but it’s certainly off to a solid start.
A critter known as “Chunkosaurus Rex” was named the first-ever winner of the “Fat Squirrel Week” organized by Texas Parks and Wildlife
I recently discovered that Hawaii is the only state in America that isn’t home to a single squirrel, which doesn’t really have anything to do with what I’m about to discuss but is still a fun fact I felt like sharing.
Texas is one of the 49 states where those rodents roam, and it’s home to a little less than 290 million of them based on a recent estimate that pegged the population at around 1.6 per acre.
That means there was no shortage of competitors to pick from when the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department organized the first-ever “Fat Squirrel Week” by giving its 16 state parks the opportunity to send in a picture of the heftiest one they could find on their grounds to compete in a single elimination bracket.
The squirrels that earned a spot were given names including “Nutella” and “Chunk Norris,” and by the time everything was said and done, the latter fell to “Chunkosaurus Rex,” a squirrel from Dinosaur Valley State Park that ended up prevailing in the championship round.
You love to see it.