Category Archives: true life 2002

A mathematician, a physicist and a squirrel walk into a bar…

This morning I was getting out of my car when Dr. X, a mathematician, pulled into the lot. I left my car door open while we exchanged pleasantries.

I could have sworn I saw something out of the corner of my eye. That’s when Dr. Y came running over insisting he’d just seen a squirrel run into my car.

Sure enough, there was a squirrel careening around the interior of my car with a mouth full of acorns. Didn’t anyone tell this little monster that Squirrel Awareness Week doesn’t start for 3 more days?

We opened the passengerside door thinking he’d run out. Nope. He liked it in there. Unfortunately, to open the back doors you have to reach in and manually unlock the door. Everytime we’d try that, Rocky would make like he was going to claw us.

We decided we needed a plan to get him out. Animal Control was our last resort because Dr. Y insisted that they’re pretty sloppy around here and don’t care whether they get the animal out dead or alive. As irritating as this little gray ball of chattering psychosis was, I didn’t want him to get hurt. I just wanted him out of my car.

Then the mathematicians began making this project a lot harder than it needed to be, jabbering about vectors and shit. That’s when I remembered: these two are theoreticians. We were probably going to have to design a computer model first or something.

I had a sudden flashback to the incident involving the nuclear physicists, the espresso machine, and the powerstrip and decided to take matters into my own hands.

Don’t get me wrong, they were proposing a solid course of action, but I needed to get to work and we’d already spent an awful lot of time taking into account the basic concepts of rodent behavior. How long was it going to take us to factor in basic human nature? I didn’t have that kind of time. I wanted the little monster out of my car so I could get some coffee, er, I mean, get to work.

We were going to have to enact The Plan and hope for the best.

I can’t even begin to imagine how silly we looked.

We all gathered on the passengerside of the car. Dr. X inflated the plastic newspaper bag he found in his car. (Thank god they weren’t microbiologists or we’d still be there sterilizing the bag before one of them would get it near their mouth). As the designated physicist in the bunch, they left it to me to decide how much he should inflate the bag. I made up a nonsense theory about the relationship between sound pressure levels and the tensile strength of the plastic (eventually conceding that everything I knew about the subject I learned at summer camp) and then we were ready.

We counted to 3. And nothing happened. Dr. X didn’t hit the bag hard enough and it just sort of made a dull squeaking fart-esque noise, causing us to start laughing. We tried again.

1. 2. 3. Bang!

The squirrel made tracks, I got my briefcase, and, most importantly, I was reunited with my beloved coffee.

I made Dr. X promise to check in with the campus police to explain the loud gunfire-like sound so we didn’t have every cop in the area descending on this place looking for snipers.

That was what had originally hung up the plan…would people hear the popping sound and mistake it for gunfire? People are rather on edge here as there’s a sniper loose in the DC area and every belief that s/he will strike again.

Dr. X got to make the call because he has tenure, you see, and is not only expected but required by his rank to periodically make loony phonecalls like this to University officials. It’s part of the deal. If word got out that academics were even partially sane or, even worse, useful, they might expect us to behave like so-called normal people. Can’t have that now, can we? Ruins all the fun.

Originally posted October 4, 2002 10:06 AM at punkprincess.com

Imported Comments

Oh man. Talk about timely, huh? I have a story like that about skunks, sent to me by my mother this morning.

I’d post it, but I have to translate it into English first.
Posted by: Tara at October 4, 2002 12:50 PM

Funny you mention skunks Tara because I was thinking about the way these stories grow and mutate on campus, in a week or so it will have been a skunk. Or maybe a deer. By next semester there will be a rumor about a family of bears living in an SUV in the student parking garage.
Posted by: skarlet at October 4, 2002 05:43 PM

Hey, did you hear about the bears that escaped from Rock Creek Park and took up residence in a dorm? It’s hard to differentiate between bears and ordinary students, although the bears show up for class more often.
Posted by: Linkmeister at October 4, 2002 06:10 PM

I just very nearly did a classic spit-take onto my monitor, Link. *giggle*
Posted by: skarlet at October 4, 2002 08:56 PM

Very cute!
Posted by: Zelda at October 5, 2002 10:01 AM

The other day I was walking to BART in the wee morning light and was stopped by a squirrel blockade. There was this enormous fluffy beastie, scampering down the tree as fast as his little muscled legs could propel him, with a mouth full of almonds.

I have been known to leave out almonds, or brazil nuts, or even pecans, for the little guys when they get bullied by the my-fig-eating alpha squirrels.

So here’s this big fat squirrel, at eye level with me on this tree, teeth cradling 2 almonds, giving me The Look. The “I can fit two more, lady,” look.

Here are some adorable baby bears, apropos of nothing.
Posted by: Jessica at October 5, 2002 02:16 PM

You think the squirrels are organizing? They can take us, I think.

I found acorns in my car and I’m convinced it now has the faint aroma of squirrel pee, but maybe I’m imagining that…
Posted by: skarlet at October 5, 2002 02:39 PM

i’m laughing so hard i’m crying, and my son thinks i’m insane. i blame all of you. and the damn squirrels too.

i have no squirrels. i feel so deprived.
Posted by: kd at October 5, 2002 07:03 PM

This is one of the funniest damn stories EVER! EVER! EVER to exist! BWAAAAAAHHHH HAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted by: JeanNINE at October 7, 2002 04:21 PM

i have no squirrels. i feel so deprived.

Hey KD: expect a package. ;)

I’m only kidding of course.

No animals were injured in the making of this website.
Posted by: skarlet at October 8, 2002 11:37 AM

I told you I’m not Martha Stewart, you didn’t listen.

Weeding is a crap shoot because I can never tell which are the wildflowers and which are the weeds until they start blooming. Really, you could argue that all wildflowers are weeds – and sometimes I do just that rather than tend a bed.

One bed, for those playing along at home, is about 40 x 2, the other is about 15 x 3. There are no fancy patterns or clever design elements. They’re wildflower beds. I don’t understand why people put in wildflowers and then try to do precious things with them.

Now here’s the thing you have to keep in mind: gardening stresses me out. Gardening is not relaxing to me. Not the planting part, anyway. It’s all rather violent, if you think about it. When you plant seedlings you have to pull them out of those little plastic pots, you can break their little roots. I get very distressed about that.

And then there’s the digging. You have to dig little holes to put in the plants.

And there are earthworms in the ground. I get so upset if I injure an earthworm. I make little offerings to them to appease their gods, but I still feel bad about it.

I don’t feel bad about fishing with worms though. Fishing with worms is different than mowing them down in a drive-by trowelling accident while you’re planting phlox. Don’t ask me why. It just is. I’m the arbitrary sort-of Buddhist.

Grubs are another story. Again with the arbitrary rules…I toss the grubs I find to the cardinals. Nasty things. The grubs, not the cardinals. From a distance I must look like Snow White out there, with my cute little flock of birds following me around and singing happily to me. It’s the grubs. Make no mistake, those birds only love me for my grubs. I always feel bad about the grubs later though, because they’re immature scarab beetles and all – but they’re destructive, and I like the way the cardinals sing to me. It soothes me a little bit as I go about my unholy rampage of worm-decapitation and mayhem.

Since I was working out back I didn’t run into Walter, which is good, because there’s a whole other set of arbitrary rules for our friends the snakes. When I encounter a snake I try hard to repatriate it into the wild (okay, the neighbor across the street’s yard) but if they startle me I can make no promises. I know they’re beneficial, but I hate them. Walter lives in my next door neighbor’s front yard. Sometimes he comes over and suns himself on the rock border around my herb garden, even though he knows he’s not supposed to. He and I have discussed this, you see. He’s very pretty, actually – a brilliant emerald green.

Next time I catch him on that rock though it’s into the shoebox with a one-way ticket out of town. I didn’t encounter any snakes yesterday so I don’t know how I got off on this tangent. Oh yes, so here are some of the new kids: Scabiosa (pink mist). I have to admit, I’m a little worried about this one. It’s an import (from England) and my least favorite exotic invasive, English Ivy, is, well, English too. (I know. I’m a hypocrit. Let’s not talk about the bamboo, okay? I’m not perfect). What makes me particularly wary of this one is the prohibition from propagation that I found both on the tag that came with the plant and at Heritage Perennials. I don’t know if that’s a patent issue or if this plant has some potentially unsavory quality like English Ivy.

Nevertheless, I planted it anyway. The Scabiosa, not the Ivy. I’ve been waging war on that damn Ivy ever since I moved in here. (And this task is made all the more difficult because I react to English Ivy the way most people react to poison ivy). English Ivy is tangible proof that evil exists. Do not plant English Ivy in the United States. There are native groundcovers that will do the job. English Ivy is invasive and it wants nothing more than to damage your house and your fencing and to kill everything in it’s path. You will understand this if you ever have a 40 foot tall tree lean over your house the day after you buy it because it’s been weakened by Ivy. Then you have to pay a lot of money to have what was once a perfectly good tree removed. If I ever catch you planting Ivy I will personally come to your house and remove it. Are we clear on this?

Good.

I added a few more Coreopsis grandiflora (early sunrise variety) because they’re so darn cute. They self-sow nicely but I only had them in one bed so I bought a couple more to fill out another bed. I liked that this bed was all blue and purple flowers but it was a bit too cute that way. Eh, if it looks bad they can always be moved. Butterflies really dig these flowers.

At the back end of this bed I put in some lupines because the Hummingbirds like to have little orgies with them. There are few things as enjoyable as sitting quietly, drinking tea, and watching a hummingbird frenzy. Hummingbird feeders attract ants. Lupines don’t. Well, if they do, you have other problems.

The perfect edging plants for this kind of wildflower bed (read: unkempt and sort of Darwinian) are Alaskan Shasta Daisies. Neither Alaskan, nor daisies, I suspect. They are identified at perennials.com as Chrysanthemum weyrichii ‘White Bomb’. Okay, whatever. They’re cute, they don’t take over, and I can ignore them once they’re planted.

I filled in a few spots with some annuals, Gazanias. Some people claim that they can keep these going as perennials. Yeah, maybe in southern Africa, not here. These are really cute because at sunset you can watch their flowers close up, and then in the morning you can watch them open again. This enables you to deny that you’re just sitting and staring into space.

“Don’t bother me now, I’m watching the flowers.”

Gloriosa Daisies are another handy filler. They don’t always self-seed the way they should, but they’re easy to replace and they like to be ignored. I like that in a plant.