Last week, I wrote a column attempting to amass a student-led army to destroy the caterpillar population on the University’s campus.
The response was overwhelming. If social media interaction equals enlistment, we have a standing army of more than 1,000 students ready to kill whatever I tell them to.
Unfortunately, 1,000 people are too many militiamen for one campaign. I have decided to start a second concurrent campaign.
We’re going to take care of the furry-tailed rats all over campus. I speak, of course, about the squirrels.
Before you get all worked up — seriously, I can hear the complaints now: “Don’t touch the squirrels, they’re precious and cute!” or “I used to have pet squirrels, they’re domesticable.” “Those squirrels save lives!” “I’m a vegetarian, I love animals,” — I want you to shut your whiny mouth.
I want you to shave a squirrel’s tail. Seriously. Do it.
Googling it could work, too, I guess.
Either way, disgusting, right?
Also, squirrels are not innocent.
In Russia in 2005 – back when it was still the commie Soviet Union, probably – a stray dog was barking at a gang of squirrels. The Crip squirrels weren’t having it, so they decided to gang-kill the dog – presumably as an initiation ceremony.
But squirrels don’t stop at attacking other animals. Sometimes, they go for humans, the purest earthly race.
In Cuesta Park in California, squirrels attack little, precious, innocent children.
Thirteen — an unlucky number — attacks were reported between May 2006 and March 2007, forcing the Fish and Game Commission to issue a statement calling the parks’ squirrels a “threat to continued public safety.”
So what did Fish and Game do about it? It decided to trap and kill the squirrels.
One might naturally assume that the brave Fish and Game rangers placed nut-filled cage traps around the park and waited.
Well, you know what they say about those who assume — if you don’t, you’re an idiot.
The rangers used decoy baby carriages to trap the squirrels because the squirrels were routinely jumping into baby carriages to bite little children’s faces off.
I was not able to find out if it worked. The rangers never made it back to file a report. Syfy is drafting a script now.
But my reasoning for this doesn’t stop with squirrels being gross and dangerous. I think they’re up to something more … sinister.
On a hunch, I Googled “squirrels + spies.” It wasn’t a waste of time.
The first headline comes from the clearly reputable ynetnews.com: “Iranians arrest 14 squirrels for spying.”
According to the state-sponsored news agency IRNA, Iranian “intelligence operatives arrested 14 squirrels within Iran’s borders” for “carrying spy gear of foreign agencies.”
Thanks to the astute and obviously overly-suspicious Iranian intelligence agents, the squirrel uprising was quelled before they took action.
The list of people and organizations that want to spy on LSU is not short.
Texas A&M’s football team and Gov. Bobby Jindal are two excellent examples that I just easily came up with right now.
As these instances show, squirrels are capable of so much more than we give them credit.
Something must be done about this not-so-phantom menace, and we have the standing army to do it.
Oh, yeah. Squirrels are edible, too.
Go forth, Sheep.
John Parker Ford is a 22-year-old mass communication senior from Alexandria.