Guest Blog Post – A new front in the War on Squirrels

Tim Kelly

[Editor’s Note: Last Wednesday night, Courtney Enlow partied like it was 1999. She is still recovering, so today we bring you a special guest column written by Tim Kelly.]

Allow me to say a word regarding squirrels: wretched.

I suppose I should expound on that single-word description. Many people know that humans and squirrels have been bitter enemies for thousands of years, but few know just how much things have escalated. Ask any leading scientist and they will tell you that squirrels, along with hurricanes and Orlando Bloom, make up the “Big Three” of horrifying natural phenomena endangering our way of life.

This struggle between man and squirrel, spanning several millennia with only brief periods of tenuous peace (i.e., the Chillicothe Summit in 1879; and the Sugar Creek Accords of 1984, which lasted only three days before the squirrel representative’s outlandish demands forced Ronald Reagan to end negotiations), has taken a startling turn. While it was once a heated vendetta waged openly in back yards and public parks, a news report has uncovered new and frightening details about where the conflict is heading.

According to this very real report from July of 2007, the Iranian police arrested 14 squirrels on charges of spying. For those of you who were taking a drink from your Hi*C Orange-Raspberry juice box while reading that sentence, I will pause a moment to allow you to clean up the mess caused by your spit-take …

… Alright. Now, aside from providing concrete evidence that the people calling the shots in Iran are frothing, mind-rattlingly insane, this suggests a new era in squirrel warfare. Iran’s squirrel-espionage paranoia all but confirms the existence of their own squirrel spy program. For those of us in the Midwest, the implications of undercover Iranian-trained squirrels leave us paralyzed by a fear that we are already being overtaken. For anyone unaware of the squirrel situation in Missouri, allow me to offer a crash course. According to the latest figures, it is estimated (by me) that the squirrel-to-human ratio in this region sit squarely in the area of 6 million squirrels for every one human. At this rate, future generations of humans will be subject to great herds of squirrels stampeding across the countryside. The small towns will be the first to fall under squirrel rule, becoming bases from which the squirrels will launch their attacks on the larger urban centers.

Let’s all be honest, we’ve been wary of the squirrels from the get-go, so the news that squirrels are converting to Islamo-Fascism should not come as a surprise. The whole “furry woodland creature” image is less believable the closer you look. For one thing, there’s the constant sneaking around. If squirrels would like things between them and the humans to be less tense, might I recommend a decrease in stealthy, suspicion-raising movements around us, if not a departure from such movements altogether? After all, if I were to go around sneaking silently near groups of humans (which I do), would it not make sense for them to look on me suspiciously and think me to be creepy and odd (which they do)? Likewise, when a person gets within 20 feet of me, if I were to run away at full speed and hide in a tree, would that not imply that I was up to something unsavory?

Instead of sneaking, a polite “hello” would do nicely. Perhaps an explanation of the reason or purpose of their presence, saying, “Hello, sir. I’ve just finished terrorizing some gentle sparrows and scaring them away from your bird feeder. A little bit later I’ll be scraping little divots in your freshly-sodded lawn and burying some acorns. Some of them may shoot out from under your lawnmower at twice the speed of sound and embed themselves in your shin.” Not welcome news by any means, but at least they could be up front about it.

The squirrels of course claim innocence. The last time I tried to talk to one of them, it acted like it didn’t know what I was talking about. When I called him on his phony “leave me alone, I’m just an animal” act and tried to corner him, he made a break for it. I put up a good chase, but he lost me once we were in the tree.

Tim Kelly is a mythical creature reportedly sighted numerous times in the wooded lands of North America. Actually, that’s Bigfoot. Tim Kelly’s bio and background will sound much more plausible once he puts thought into making it up. You can find more of his writing at his MySpace blog.