What is This?

Well, for some reason I could not get this to post for the longest time and now that it finally has, the quality is not so good.

But Josie is so cute in this video! When I come back to her and praise her for keeping the rodent up there all night she looks like she's smiling :) haha! and there's also a time when she's barking you can catch her looking at me out of the corner of her eye like, "are you watching me be vicious?"

Anyways, I was home alone and studying up in my room with my windows open a couple days back...pacing back and forth (memorizing) when I noticed from my window that Josie kept jumping up on her hind legs! Then she started barking! I saw some kind of blob in the little tree next to her barn and decided to go check it out. What I saw was a creature I've never seen before (that I know of!) He looks like a beaver, prairie dog, gopher, and squirrel mix - very weird. I was nervous to get too close, so I waited to get some second opinions. A friend came over to study - she had also never seen something quite like it. Mom missed it, so I took some pictures for her. We are both stumped and want to know if anyone else knows what it is? This mysterious creature is on the creepy side simply because we don't know what it is (and b/c it has beady little eyes, and claws, and buck teeth, and monkey-ish hands and feet, and he is extremely up tight. Never once did he move or even blink in all the times I ever went out to observe him until that last time when I was taking the video, he not only blinked but turned his head and looked right at me! AGH!)