Sure squirrels are cute and fluffy. What most people don’t know is they have it in for us.
With all the news about war, flooding, the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks and the death of Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist legitimately filling the airwaves and blogosphere, I'd be wrong to expect that everyone has (like me) been keeping up with the sinister plans of squirrels, our cutest rodents.
Much is written in jest of squirrels. But this writer wants no part of that tradition. Mark my words: the threat that is posed by a vast international squirrel terrorist conspiracy cannot be overstated.
As the Scotsman reports, a race war between squirrels is currently brewing in Scotland's Lothian region. White squirrels have moved in on the territory of grey squirrels, which are themselves gentrifying the area previously held by the native red squirrel to the point that the latter is nearly gone from the region.
While some have called for a sort of "squirrel apartheid" to keep the greys from the reds, for now at least an uneasy truce exists between the greys and the whites, according to one area woman quoted in the Scotsman piece.
"[White squirrels] are just like grey squirrels," she said, "although I was still surprised that the greys left them alone, as they look so different."
Many experts believe the red/grey/white tension is simply a by-product of the longstanding White Squirrel War and Black Squirrel Squabble that have long raged in the U.S. And, as these conflicts make clear, it is not just squirrel infighting that threatens to explode into an orgiastic, terrorist bloodbath. Squirrels are increasingly making humans the victims of their savage and cowardly terrorist acts. In fact, for every bad deed done to man by man, or man by nature, I can cite five that are the work of squirrels.
For example, an undoubtedly cute squirrel terrorist sabotaged a power transformer in Tampa, Fl. last week, according to Tampa Bay's 10. His deliberate action caused close to 2,000 Tampans to lose power for up to four hours but was restored, the piece emphasizes, “by ten p-m."
Some animal lover might claim this act was not deliberate. To them I say, "You're nuts."
How else to explain a coordinated squirrel suicide attack in Kansas City -- one-thousand miles away -- on yet another power transformer on the same day? The KC squirrel's terrorist act caused 1,700 customers to lose power.
Another 2,000 electrical customers also lost power recently in Brighton, Ma. after still another squirrel attack on our power supply -- this one carried out in spite of security measures like "squirrel guards" taken to prevent such terrorist acts.
Attacks on our power supply and petty crimes (such as theft of household bird feed) have not proven sufficiently vile acts for squirrels, though. They have begun to target humans with direct physical assaults. In Leominster, Ma. last month a squirrel attacked a police officer who was attempting to arrest the squirrel's human minder. As this gripping slideshow of the carnage makes clear, the squirrel is now caged, the officer's surname is "Flowers," and the latter was mocked handily by his peers.
Flowers isn't alone. A few years ago a "flesh-eating" squirrel terrorized tiny (and aptly named) Knutsford, England. All told his "savage" bites broke the skin of six victims.
But those are only isolated incidents, right? Hardly.
Squirrels displaying keen terrorist abilities have recently been so bold as to savagely maul large dogs, including a Labrador retriever named Carl.
It's no coincidence, mind you, that the squirrel attacked a dog, man's best friend and protector.
Elsewhere squirrels have been working feverishly to perfect primitive biowarfare tactics, including carrying tularemia. (According to the CDC, tularemia can be weaponized and may also be fatal in humans.) In addition to tularemia, squirrels also have the ability to carry plague and monkeypox.
Squirrels' savvy -- and thus their power to do harm -- grows by the day. These devious creatures have learned to use the Internet and mass media to spew their anti-human venom. Here's Jamison T. Squirrel last month, writing in Bowling Green University's student newspaper, with a pointed message to returning students:
On behalf of the squirrel population, welcome back. May you have the privilege of tripping over one of us and breaking an appendage.
In addition to direct threats to cause injuries to humans, squirrels have even begun celebrating their own homicide bombings in hip-hop-like anthems. In The Big Backyard: The Squirrel's Sonata an anonymous Chicago squirrel writes:
Things are great / Since the dog exploded. / Our cheeks are loaded / With the best acorns.
And when media saturation and pop-culture ditties prove not to be enough, these crafty critters call upon their witless allies: the self-hating humans at PETA.
If these threats from squirrels were manmade we'd have been at war with the vermin some time ago. But because our enemy in this case is cute and fluffy, we tend to laugh off the consequences of their actions. As the scope of this vast conspiracy makes clear, that's a mistake.
What can be done to beat back the squirrel? For one, people can adopt the cruel tactics of the squirrels themselves. That's happening in places like Maysville, Ky. and Belleville, Il., where hungry crossbow hunters have declared open season on these rodents. In the Northeast, fishermen may have resorted to using live squirrels as fish bait. Still others, like the Anti Squirrel Coalition and its affiliated webring, suggest an apocalyptic battle to eliminate squirrels once and for all.
Regardless the tactic to subjugate these beasts, the threat posed by the squirrel's vast international terrorist conspiracy calls for swift, decisive action. It is a dire situation that must be taken seriously.
After all, to quote a near-corollary to Thoreau, "The squirrel you don't kill in earnest shall kill you in jest."
