Christmas Vacation's Terrifying Squirrel Scene Was A Behind-The-Scenes Nightmare

Near the end of Jeremiah S. Chechick's 1989 comedy "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation," the feckless, foolish Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) discovers that a squirrel is living inside his family's Christmas tree. This seems logical, as Clark had uprooted the tree himself, freely stealing it from a nearby mountainside. It's too large for the house, drips sap everywhere, and, as we eventually learn, is the home to all manner of hyperkinetic fauna. In a memorable and comedic scene, Clark stares into the branches of his tree, only to find the squirrel staring back at him. The squirrel leaps from the branches and runs around the house, causing chaos. It's a notable scene in a movie full of them. 

It's also a sad story. It seems that the squirrel on camera wasn't well-trained. For some of the more fleeting shots, a fake squirrel was placed on Chase's shoulder, while the close-ups of the squirrel were captured quickly. The scene was assembled in editing, without the squirrel doing much of anything active. The reason the squirrel wasn't well-trained was that it was a last-minute replacement. It seems that the original squirrel trained for the role had died of a heart attack shortly before filming was to begin. The film's animal handler was Scott Hart, who also worked on films like "Planes, Trains & Automobiles," "The Shawshank Redemption," and "Anger Management." He was likely the one who had to mourn the death of the first squirrel while hurrying to find another.

The squirrel's death was confirmed by Beverly D'Angelo, who played Ellen Griswold in "Christmas Vacation," when she recently spoke at Fan Expo Chicago (handily covered by EW). She had to break the bad news, for the first time, to her "Christmas" co-star Juliette Lewis, who was only 15 when the movie was made. It's quite a sad story. 

Lewis recalled that the squirrel sequence took three full days to shoot, which was a very long time to devote to such a short sequence. D'Angelo pointed out that it was because the original squirrel was dead. No one had told Lewis because she was only a teenager. D'Angelo even realized that telling Lewis in 2025 — and revealing the death to the Expo attendees — only made the scene sadder. In her words: 

"The squirrel had a heart attack. [...] So the squirrel that we ended up using was not the original squirrel. It was not trained. And Chevy ended up wearing a stuffed squirrel on his shoulder for everything but the leap at the camera. I've destroyed the magic."

Lewis pointed out that, yes, that's so sad. 2025 was a year that saw Superman himself saving a squirrel from death, so the lives of America's most common arboreal rodents are on the audience's minds. Of course, "Christmas Vacation" was filmed in March of 1989, and squirrels only live about eight years. Even the replacement squirrel would have died of old age before James Cameron's "Titanic" hit theaters. Neither squirrel lived long enough to enjoy the glories of "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It," and would never have played "Resident Evil 2." 

It's certainly sad that a trained squirrel passed away before it had a chance to be immortalized in "Christmas Vacation," but the original squirrel's upstart understudy got the part instead, leading to its big break. We can, perhaps, celebrate that a relative unknown received untold exposure thanks to the death of a colleague. One wonders if the squirrel felt ambivalent about that.