Squirrel Talk
Written October 31, 2004

I like sitting on my porch. There’s not much of a view during these darkest days but I need the calming atmosphere to address the pressing issues of life: “How am I going to write four papers in a week? Are terrorists going to kill my mother? Should I be wearing pants right now?” And so forth, until the stress compresses into a new strain of Super High Density Stress ™ in order to fit into my merely average-sized brain. The porch is just a coping mechanism of sorts.

One day, while I idly contemplated the nuances of my linguistics textbook beneath the grey, grey skies, the squirrel appeared. Now, I am no stranger to the wily ways of squirrels and generally don’t care for them unless they attack me in large numbers, but this particular squirrel was different. It waddled with a sassy gait, an adolescent squirrel full of teenage squirrel angst. He carried, in his mouth, a gigantic green apple. I was impressed.

As I watched, the squirrel scurried over to a nearby car parked on the street and after carefully surveying the area for rival squirrel spies, proceeded to climb into the undercarriage of the vehicle with the apple. When he reemerged, the apple was gone and the squirrel scampered away into the treetop canopies, his stash safely hidden. Minutes later, the car was gone, inadvertently driving the apple cache to parts unknown. I snickered – stupid squirrel – and went inside to put on some pants.

The next day, the exact same squirrel reappeared with nuts bulging in his cheeks (insert offensive nut joke here). Incredibly enough, he scoped the situation, crept over to a soccer-mom SUV and proceeded to hide his nuts somewhere under the exhaust, just like before. I shook my head.

“Yo, squirrel.” I called him over. My latent mutant ability allows me to talk to metaphorical squirrels when nobody’s around. Something tells me that I’m not quite X-Men material, but at last my hidden talent was coming in handy.

The squirrel wandered over, nutless: “Whassap, playa?”

“You realize that you’re fucking stupid, even for a squirrel, right? Those nuts will be gone within an hour, just like the apple yesterday.”

The squirrel peered at me. “Yeah, I know. You realize that you’re talking to a squirrel, right? Moron .”

Unphased, I forged onwards with my investigation: “So why do you bother hiding your stuff in cars then? What’s the point, if some other punk-ass squirrel on the other side of town gets to eat those apples?”

The squirrel shrugged, insofar as squirrels are capable of shrugging. “I dunno. It’s what squirrels do. We hide stuff. Ever since you guys started locking the garage door, I have nowhere to store my shit. Screw you, by the way.”

I shook my head. Squirrels are unbearably profane. “Jesus. So you waste all that time, never really learning anything, just because it’s ‘what squirrels do?’ Remind me never to believe in reincarnation.”

The squirrel glanced at the textbook on my lap. “So what is it that you do, smartass? What are you working on here?”

“Well, I’m studying for a multiple-choice quiz. You have to memorize all these facts, and sometimes the answer is a) and sometimes it’s b), but usually it’s both a) and b) but not d). Most of the time I just guess though.”

The squirrel chuckled: chitter-chitter. “So you memorize and regurgitate at a mediocre level? Why?”

I thought for a second. “Well, it’s what students do. And then we whitewash our minds for the next batch of memorizing. It’s how you get good grades, I’ve been told.”

The squirrel looked at me. “Wow, you’re right. Squirrels are really stupid.” He retrieved his nuts from the SUV, dropped them on my textbook and left without another word.

The last paragraph of this column got chopped in the Cord, which made me look like a complete crackhead (moreso than I already did, talking to squirrels and such). I was displeased to say the least - this year was packed with erroneous cuts as far as I'm concerned. Anyways, the squirrel really did exist - although he didn't talk to me - and he really did try to hide a massive apple underneath a car. There's a little bit of truth in every metaphoric lie.