------------------------------------------------------------------------ A squirrel trap Newsgroups: alt.devilbunnies From: adm4@po.cwru.edu (Aaron Mandelbaum) Message-ID: Date: Wed, 31 Aug 1994 04:23:22 GMT Organization: CWRU This is Aaron, in Cleveland. As far as I can tell, this is squirrel central USA. At least, I hope it is... I think I made a bad mistake. I went to the campus health service to check out my wrist, I thought it might be carpal tunnel, but they said it was probably a muscle strain, whatever. Anyway, they gave me a prescription of ibuprofen for the pain, and I've been mildly buzzed all day. (Sheesh! I'm afraid to try illegal drugs, I get way too high on normal stuff.) Anyway, I decided, if that's the right word, that it might be a good idea if I tried to trap one of the squirrels, to ask a few questions, you know? So I got a box and some raisin nut bran (no acorns to be seen!) and laid it outside the dorm while no one (nosquir? I think not!) was looking. You know the set up, a stick, a piece of string, hide behind the wall, wait for some thing to blunder inside... I know, I know, pretty pitiful. Shadow, forgive me. Sure enough, one of the squirrels wandered over to look at the setup. I saw it (him? her? excuse me if I can't sex squirrels at a distance) look at the cereal, the box, the stick, and follow the string right to where I was hiding. It stared me right in the eyes, and grinned. Have you ever seen a squirrel grin? Trust me, you don't want to. I decided to make a strategic retreat. A VERY FAST strategic retreat. Later, better armed (never got around to buying that gun, but I figure a hockey stick'll at least let me keep them at a distance. I need something with mass, though...), I returned to inspect the remains of my trap. Nothing. They even carried off the box, and it was at least two feet on a side. Where did they put it? I checked around the nearby bushes for signs of a large box being dragged, and instead found a message, a printout, by a laser printer by the look of it. Maybe an inkjet, who knows? Pitiful, truly pitiful. Who do you think you're dealing with? Who do you think we are? By the way, (over) The other side was blank. I had almost a second to wonder about that before I felt myself falling... I landed in a small glass cage, in the center of a large cement-walled room, surrounded by laughing squirrels. I swear, that's what they were doing, laughing. Not just on the floor -- the entire room was filled with metal junglejim looking thingies that most of them were perched on. There must have been a thousand of them! Two thousand! All laughing, withtheir horrible chittering laugh! I flailed about with the hockey stick, but the walls wouldn't break. So I threw myself at one... It broke. It must have been safety glass, since I wasn't immediately sliced by thousands of shards. I charged across the room towards the only visible exit, swinging the stick around to keep the squirrels at a distance, but I couldn't find a way past the metal bars that criscrossed the room at every conceivable angle. Finally, I had to climb over them, which took a while -- I'm out of shape, haven't done that sort of thing since grade school! I reached the exit and gave the room one last glance, wondering why I hadn't been swarmed before then. They were gone, all of them! I'd noticed them clearing a path from in front of me, but I hadn't seen them leaving. I slowly (veerrryy slooowwlly, it involved a lot of climbing and squeezing) examined the perimeter of the room, looking for squirrel sized exits I might have missed, but I didn't see any. When I found myself back at the exit, I went through it, and heard it close behind me, leaving me in a small cement tunnel lined by pipes and wires, confronted by a ladder leading up to the surface. I climbed out and replaced the cover -- it was the entrance to the steam tunnels, just a few feet from my dorm. I looked at where I'd set the trap -- and where they'd set their much much better one -- and saw nothing, no sign of the chute I must have fallen down. I went inside and snuck the hockey stick back into the owner's room. Then I went to mine, shut the door, laid down on the bed and just quivered nervously for a while. This is bad. Really bad. The squirrels here are obviously organized, and there are more of them than I'd ever thought possible. What do they eat? Do I really want to know? Why did they let me go? Did they, really? What's going on here? More later, I hope... -- Aaron Mandelbaum "Okay, okay, NOW I'm paranoid." "To flee, or not to flee, THAT is the question!" ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Usenet Web 1.0.3 (development) / webmaster@netimages.com