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  10.30.00 <ROANOKE, VIRGINIA> -- Next time you drive your car down a residential street, notice how many squirrels scamper away and jump into nearby trees. Multiply this squirrel encounter by 20 million drivers, 80 million squirrel escapes, 24 hours, and a terrifying pictures comes into focus: squirrel legs that are becoming dangerously powerful.
"OVER powerful is how I would describe it," says Bill Evers, Professor of Psychology, Emeritus, at Virginia Technological College. "When I was a kid, about 15 years ago, squirrels would run over to a tree and MAYBE they would hop onto it. Even the best of these hopping squirrels would only go 4 or 5 inches in the air. Just 2 days ago, while I was stealing my neighbor's newspaper, I startled a squirrel who leapt onto a nearby oak tree. He must have jumped 2 feet in the air! I said to myself, 'My God! That squirrel must have jumped 2 feet in the air!' If they're jumping like kangaroos now, what's next? Flying? Sure, you laugh.{Editors Note: We apologize for laughing at Mr. Evers during this interview} Ridiculous you say?! {Editors Note: At this point in the interview we regrettably called Mr. Evers a 'Ridiculous, Ridiculous man'. We apologize for this less-than-journalistic commentary.} If people would just open their eyes they'd see what's going on: a maddening escalation of squirrel limb power that shows no sign of slowing!"
"Someone actually said that squirrel legs are getting STRONGER? Absurd! Show me the evidence. I don't care what they THINK, I want to see their data!" Noted squirrelologist, Dr Ben Vereen, sees the squirrel leg situation quite differently. "It doesn't matter what they FEEL is the truth or what they GUESS to be true. {Editors Note: At this very moment during the interview a squirrel leaping from the ground, sailed upwards past the 4th floor window of Dr Vereen's office}. The scientific method tells us how to quantify things so we can KNOW what is true." "My team has had to go back and piece together a picture of squirrel leg power as it stood 15 years ago," Vereen continued. "The lone study done on squirrel leg power back in 1985 was, unfortunately, poorly designed. It appears there are serious issues with their sample case. By studying only domesticated, shoebox living squirrels named Lucky-Hank, we believe the leg power levels reported in this study were too low. Thankfully, though, literature of the day made many mentions of squirrels and their penchant for jumping. Many children's books printed in 1985 described 'Cows jumping over the moon'; Cows, as you well know, are what squirrels were called back in 1985. In another example, The National Enquirer reported in its June 6th, 1985 edition, that a red squirrel in Kentucky jumped nearly 200 feet to be with its master as that farmer was being sucked up into the anus of an alien space ship. When we take the mean jumping height of all these literary references, we see that the 1985 squirrel could jump approximately 5,823 feet in the air. Yes, its true that we've had trouble measuring the leg power of the modern squirrel, but by guessing at what that modern power measurement might be we can confidently state that squirrel leg power is actually DECREASING. "NEVER TRUST A SQUIRRELOLOGIST!" hollered Evers when confronted with Dr Vereen's conclusions. "Too general. Squirrelologists only know the squirrel leg in the context of the entire squirrel and that's just not what we're dealing with here. You have to know the squirrel leg or the squirrel arm on its own terms, and not in the context of some artificial filter. If you want to study Alabama history you don't study US history; you study Alabama history. If a US historian says they understand Alabama, do you believe them? No Way! Its the same thing!" Evers criticisms of Dr Vereen do seem to hold water. While world renowned for their sociological studies of squirrel life, recent attempts at collecting the more specific leg power data have turned out disastrously for Dr. Vereen and his team. Dr. Vereen's own journal entries describe "frightened squirrels who time and time again run away from our scientific measuring equipment (a meter stick and 2 little electrodes) leaving me completely crestfallen." The only time Dr. Vereen's data collectors did catch a squirrel, the electrodes were misapplied, causing the squirrel and one of the data collectors to swap brain ability, setting back efforts another 6 months. Evers also says that its not just increased running and jumping that is causing increases in squirrel athleticism. "What people are ignoring is the fact that most squirrels getting hit by cars are the really geeky, smart, weakling squirrels. If people would just look at the evidence of their next car-induced squirrel-slaughter maybe they'd realize they're killing the squirrel intelligencia. Maybe if people saw as many tiny little squirrel glasses or as many little squirrel multi-derivative integral calculus books lying beside squished, lab-coat-clad pachyderm hit-and-run victims as I've seen, maybe then people would fess up to what's been happening. " "By killing this squirrel brain trust we are also killing those squirrels that concocted and most adamantly defended the policy of "Human Neutrality", whereby squirrels live amongst but generally* avoid humans. Why do you think squirrels run away from us? Don't say its biology. That's Crap. Its good ole social engineering. By leaving only super-leg-powered nut-eaters we leave only that element in place that would most likely advocate for the darker policy of "Human Loathing". Why just the other day a 32 year old man in Flint, Michigan was hospitalized when one of these high jumping squirrels leapt at the man's midriff and broke a rib. And I don't think it matters that the man happened to be wearing a shirt covered with an acorn pattern. That super squirrel knew exactly what it was doing." We climbed to the roof of Dr Vereen's eight story research building and interviewed the squirrel we'd earlier seen jumping past Dr Vereen's window. The squirrel, wishing to stay anonymous, seemed to back up Evers claims. "Click. Click. Squeak. Squeak." Once can't help but imagine there is a correlation between squirrel legs and the oft seen newspaper headlines reporting this and that acorn crisis. Despite their differences, both Evers and Dr Vereen agree that acorn consumption by squirrels HAS increased significantly over the past 15 years. Whether, as Evers asserts, acorn consumption rises to feed the ever expanding muscle factories in squirrel legs, or whether, as Dr Vereen claims, consumption rises because most squirrels were negatively affected by the 1980 American decade of selfishness causing them to greedily STORE far more nuts then necessary, both reach the same conclusions: there is a damaging shortfall in the acorn supply. Some official looking guy who seemed pretty dang smart (he was wearing a tie) but who we forgot to ask for a name noted, "This is really gonna put a squeeze on the many other uses of acorns. For example, many culture's prime source of food is acorn squash. What are they going to do? {Editor's Note: At this point our stranger mumbled to himself something that sounded like the following - 'Of course in Ghana there aren't any squirrels.'} Also, lots of rich people put acorns in their soap. What happens when the richest among us go without acorn soap? I don't think anyone KNOWS what will happen, and the whole point is we don't WANT to know!" What can be done? We went to the "If There Was Indeed A Squirrel Leg Power Crisis Institute" (ITWIASLPC) for some answers. Nobody was actually in the multi-building facility at the time of our visit. {Editors Note: On ITWIASLPC's door was a note that read, "We've all gone fishin' Be back soon. Thanx."} They'd left the door unlocked so we went in and rooted through stuff. In the president's office, we saw a hand held recorder lying on the president's desk and helped ourselves to a listen: [In a very presidential sounding voice] "...Again, I'm not saying there IS a squirrel leg power crisis, but IF there was one, one solution might be to burn fewer Styrofoam cups in camp fires. Not sure at this juncture how this would directly solve our problem, but it FEELS right. [pause] Boy, I feel like I am REALLY getting close to a solution here. [pause] I need a break. WAIT! I KNOW! I'll call another employee fishing day.. RIGHT NOW! BRILLIANT! I better call the school bus company and get those buses before the kids try to... [buzz] PHYLLIS! HAVE THE BUSES SENT OVER. WE'RE GOING AGAIN! THINK BLUEGIL BABY!.... Evers has his own solution. "We adults living in squirrel leg fear have got to make the young people see what's going down. Quite frankly I feel like we adults have really dropped the baton on this one. We've got to pick that baton up. Then we need to go back to the line where we hand off the baton. We need to make sure that our kids get back to the line where they receive the baton. If we get caught standing on the wrong side of these lines we might get called for a foul and getting a foul is bad. Between these lines there is this kind of little zone where the handing of the baton actually takes place. We need to get back into that zone. Right now its like we've fallen out of that zone. In fact, its like we've walked off the track all together and we're on the infield talking to another runner. Maybe we're having a discussion about bananas. Even if we could change the topic from bananas to squirrels and then take a step back towards the zone, well that would be a topic change and a step in the right direction!" back  top |
