The St. Louis Cardinals have animal friends that secretly help them win baseball games

It all started innocently enough. On Oct. 5, 2011, the St. Louis Cardinals were hosting the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 4 of the National League Division Series. The game was briefly delayed by a squirrel running around the outfield. No one thought much of it.

Then, the next game, this happened.

A squirrel, possibly the same squirrel as the previous game, went running along home plate. It didn’t cause a delay, but became infamously known as the Rally Squirrel. The Cardinals went on to win the World Series that year.

So what does a random squirrel in 2011 have to do with anything? Well, we’ve done some investigating and it appears animals, just like that famed Rally Squirrel, have a weird attraction to the Cardinals. A couple of squirrels was one thing, but digging deeper, we found it goes far beyond Chip ‘n’ Dale.

SB Nation was able to uncover five separate animal-related incidents involving the Cardinals in the last 13 months. Animals occasionally appear at baseball games, but talking to industry experts, the amount of animal involvement in Cardinals games is far above the national average.

The first animal encounter happened early in the 2015 season. The Cincinnati Reds welcomed a penguin to throw out the ceremonial first pitch.

Of course, the Cardinals were the Reds’ opponent that day. St. Louis went on to win that game 7-5 following the penguin encounter. That’s another theme of these mysterious meetings -- they usually result in wins for the Cardinals.

Less than two months later things really started to smell bad. Literally, there were skunks. First, a skunk was spotted on the warning track at Dodger Stadium.

Where did it end up? In the Cardinals dugout of course, along with some of its friends.

Unable to lure the skunks away from the Cardinals, officials instead left them in the St. Louis dugout for the game. A game the Cardinals went on to win 2-1.

Only a couple of weeks later, it was the return of the squirrel. The Cardinals were once again playing the Phillies, but this time the game was in Philadelphia. There were the Cardinals, trying to play professional baseball while another animal couldn’t seem to resist getting a closer look.

Another squirrel interruption, another win for the Cardinals. St. Louis went on to win that game 12-4. That made the Cardinals 5-0 in animal appearance games dating back to Games 4 and 5 of that fateful NLDS series.

Nearly a month passed before there was another encounter. This time, the Cubs were in Chicago. That’s when a duck decided to show up. Not only did the duck land near the St. Louis dugout, but it stayed there undeterred.

The only thing abnormal about the duck appearance was the Cardinals lost that game. The loss seemed to spark the end of the animal infatuation with St. Louis. We were unable to discover any other major occurrences through the rest of the 2015 season. It seemed as if that was that. Until last week.

That is when a cat went zipping across the field while the Cardinals played the Angels in Anaheim.

And of course, the Cardinals went on to win that game. That is seven animal sightings, including five since the start of last season. We’re not talking about some pigeons in the outfield either. There was a penguin, some skunks, a duck, a cat and of course another squirrel. The Cardinals also went 6-1 in those games, appearing to channel whatever power they had that attracted the animals.

We’ve heard of people like Cosmo Kramer being affected by the Kavorka, or the “lure of the animal,” which causes people to be naturally drawn to you. The Cardinals seem to be affected by something similar, but instead of the lure of the animal, it’s just luring animals to baseball parks.

The rest of MLB better hope it doesn’t get any stronger or the Cardinals may never lose.