RAHWAY — So this flying squirrel walks into the emergency room ...

It’s not a joke.

About 10 p.m. Tuesday night, a grayish-brown flying squirrel trapped itself inside the emergency department at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital at Rahway, fire department spokesman Capt. Ted Padavano said.

The squirrel kept launching itself from an 8-foot-high wall-mounted lamp and into a glass wall in desperate attempts to evade firefighters, Padavano said.

And, he added, it was the second time in two weeks a flying squirrel found itself in the emergency room.

Slightly larger than a chipmunk and with pieces of skin between its legs and body, the squirrel was corralled into a 15-by-15-foot trauma room that had a glass door, Padavano said.

"It would climb up on a light and would jump off and glide," toward the glass wall, according to Padavano. Falling to the ground, "it would take off like lightning," and repeat its acts of attempted aerial escapism.

"It looked just like a little squirrel, but once it jumped into the air, it had like a glider, or like a bat, skin under its arms, like a little square glider," Padavano said.

Within 10 minutes, a pair of firefighters had thrown a blanket over the nocturnal mammal and released it into a wooded area outside the hospital.

Padavano suggested squirrels may have made a nest in the building.

After all, he said, "What are the odds of having two flying squirrels in the same emergency room?"