Gnocci the squirrel, pictured, recently predicted the outcome of the 2012 presidential election — declaring Mitt Romney the winner.

Well he didn't declare, exactly, Gnocci showed us who the winner will be by eating the same food from two different bowls — one had a picture of Obama on it and the other Romney.  Gnooci had 30 minutes and definitely gorged himself on more walnuts from the Romney bowl.  As this squirrel correctly predicted Obama the winner in 2008 it's pretty clear that he's not prone to partisan bias and that he's psychic. Obama should probably just give up now.

We decided to ask an expert paranormal investigator about this talented squirrel's powers.  Read on for our exclusive interview…

Joe Nickell, pictured, is Senior Research Fellow at CSICOP and investigative columnist for Skeptical
Inquirer magazine who has written extensively about psychic animals.  We knew he would want to know of this amazing creature who sees the political future. 

Joe, as you may have heard there is a squirrel in South Carolina named "Gnocchi" who has predicted that Romney will win the 2012 presidential election. So this definitely means Romney is going to win, right?

NO.

OK but what if I told you this rodent has proven psychic abilities — Gnocchi predicted, correctly, that Obama would win four years ago! Is your answer still the same?

Yes. Of course there are no scientific tests showing that this method of divination is less effective than reading sheep entrails.

But it was scientific — They put nuts in two different dishes, each dish had had a picture of one of the candidates. The squirrel goes right for Romney's nuts. Come on — the squirrel got it right before!

The squirrel method is no better than tossing a coin, so we have insufficient data on which to make a statistical judgement.

What does it take to convince you? As a man of science, how many presidential elections will it take before you start to believe in Gnocci's powers?

A thousand elections would be a nice start.

A START!? How many to CONVINCE?  Remember, a squirrel only lives about 6 years…

Let's try the experiment with the Loch Ness Monster who, as you know, has apparently lived for centuries.

Your Facebook page says you are not a debunker but you are trying to debunk this squirrel, no?

No. I'm trying to emphasize that the burden of proof is on the squirrel handlers, not on anyone else to attempt to prove a negative.

Final question: The octopus who predicted the World Cup was legit, right? Because he nailed that.

Well, at first glance an octopus has eight chances to get it right.
But I'm not sure of the protocol they used. As I indicated earlier, the
verdict is still out on sheep entrails.

Will you go out on a limb and say that there have never been any animals that are psychic?

Well, there was Lady Wonder the psychic horse, but she was being secretly cued by her trainer. Though a fake, she seemed in every other way to have been a very nice horse. One can hardly blame the squirrel for trying, especially when presented with dishes of politicians' nuts.

Thank you Joe for answering our dumb questions!

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