Delinquent Squirrels

     Today I went to the Taylor library to return some books.  About a week before the last day, I had checked out the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda for a paper I was writing for British Literature.
     On my way out I saw a squirrel digging in the mulch by the bushes. I don't know why. He was just digging away. Burying his nuts, maybe? I forewent the semi-obligatory Freudian analysis on the subject and decided that, whatever the squirrel's reason was, it was insufficient grounds for him to be digging up university property.
     I yelled at him to stop. He looked up at me curiously and backed away a few decimeters (this is a no inches zone, no actually decimeters sounds stupid I'm not using those never mind, scratch that) inches. He stared me down. Tumbleweed rolled across the sidewalk. My fingers twitched, aching to whip out... well my cell phone was the only thing in my pocket. Maybe I would've taken a picture of him, he was kinda cute, I guess. You know. For a squirrel.
     So I asked him what depravity caused him to stoop to this level, digging in the mulch, hiding food from the world. He ran away a little, but didn't answer. "GET A JOB!" I shouted. I had no patience for his type.
     What causes a squirrel to do this? What terrible tragedy in his life caused him to go this low? Maybe I could never understand that sort of desperation. I dunno. Maybe I want to know, so I can reach out to squirrels with the hand of love and giving instead of the foot of get away from me. Maybe I don't want to know, to preserve what little innocence I have left. I don't know. Either way, he left, and the sad (or is it happy?) part is, I'll never see him ever again. Sic est vitae. Thus is life.


EPILOGUE: When I walked away, I saw someone else on the sidewalk. With as echoey as Taylor's campus is, he undoubtedly heard me and is probably convinced that I'm thoroughly insane, shouting at rodents and stuff.
Stupid delinquent squirrels, it's all their fault.