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The Squirrel, the Cat, and the Bagel
Feb. 19th, 2007 01:47 amI saw an epic confrontation on campus today.
As best I can gather, it started with an ordinary brown squirrel. A seemingly ordinary brown squirrel, who was in fact a super duper squirrel who somehow, against all logic and feats of gravity, managed to get an entire bagel up a very tall tree.
Observers were very curious as to how that had been managed, not having come by until the feat was done. But that was only until the next surprise: the squirrel dropped it.
It landed on the grass, and the squirrel stood in the branches fussing, but before the squirrel could try again...
Along came a cat. A pretty little grey thing, probably an adolescent, named Gilby (or so my fellows tell me.) Gilby is a free-ranging cat that lives on the Teikyo Loretta Heights campus, and this afternoon Gilby discovered something pretty damn fascinating. A bagel, on the ground. When he went to sniff it, what should happen but a squirrel starts yelling down at him with all the profanity in the vast and squeaky squirrel lexicon.
And that's about when I arrived: to see a crowd gathering at the glorious spectacle of nature being its most absurd. In the tree, there is a squirrel jumping from branch to brach, hissing and barking and shit-talking like you wouldn't believe. I've never heard a rodent make so much noise. That thing was fucking pissed off. It wanted its bagel. It wanted the cat. It wanted something, anyway, and whatever it was it was making itself the most angry little fuzzy animal I've ever seen.
On the ground, we have the cat. The cat's in it for the long haul too. The cat is feeling hungry, and it's got its eye on some fresh squirrel meat. The cat is circling the tree, while the squirrel runs halfway down, fusses, and darts back up into the branches again. The cat walks about five feet away and pretends to be cleaning itself, but we all know the cat is trying to fake the squirrel out. The cat's tried faking it out about four times now. The squirrel is still cussing like a sailor, by the way. The crowd can't decide who they like better: everyone feels for the squirrel having lost its dinner (who doesn't love a good bagel?), and we are very impressed by its ferocious vocabulary. But everyone feels for the cat, too: the squirrel is damned annoying, and hey a cat's gotta eat, right?
At one point a girl goes up and, in a misguided attempt at positive intervention, tears the bagel into three pieces to make it easier for the squirrel to drag back up the tree. As if the squirrel were coming down now; that's exactly what the cat would want him to do! But anyone going near the bagel scraps (cat or human) makes the squirrel bark even louder, leaping from branch to branch as if movement is required because sound alone couldn't convey the poor thing's righteous fury and indignation. Later a group of people start petting the cat, playing with it a ways away to distract it and give the poor squirrel a chance at the bagel, but the squirrel isn't taking the bait: it knows that as soon as it goes to the ground that cat will be off toward it like a shot, human petting or not.
After about ten minutes of this display, when neither squirrel nor cat has gotten his dinner and neither animal appears willing to give up and go home, I throw in the towel and continue on to the cafeteria, leaving the screaming tree-climber and adorable kitten to their business while I pursue my own. After all: a girl's gotta eat, right?
But I tell you, it was the funniest shit I'd seen in weeks...
As best I can gather, it started with an ordinary brown squirrel. A seemingly ordinary brown squirrel, who was in fact a super duper squirrel who somehow, against all logic and feats of gravity, managed to get an entire bagel up a very tall tree.
Observers were very curious as to how that had been managed, not having come by until the feat was done. But that was only until the next surprise: the squirrel dropped it.
It landed on the grass, and the squirrel stood in the branches fussing, but before the squirrel could try again...
Along came a cat. A pretty little grey thing, probably an adolescent, named Gilby (or so my fellows tell me.) Gilby is a free-ranging cat that lives on the Teikyo Loretta Heights campus, and this afternoon Gilby discovered something pretty damn fascinating. A bagel, on the ground. When he went to sniff it, what should happen but a squirrel starts yelling down at him with all the profanity in the vast and squeaky squirrel lexicon.
And that's about when I arrived: to see a crowd gathering at the glorious spectacle of nature being its most absurd. In the tree, there is a squirrel jumping from branch to brach, hissing and barking and shit-talking like you wouldn't believe. I've never heard a rodent make so much noise. That thing was fucking pissed off. It wanted its bagel. It wanted the cat. It wanted something, anyway, and whatever it was it was making itself the most angry little fuzzy animal I've ever seen.
On the ground, we have the cat. The cat's in it for the long haul too. The cat is feeling hungry, and it's got its eye on some fresh squirrel meat. The cat is circling the tree, while the squirrel runs halfway down, fusses, and darts back up into the branches again. The cat walks about five feet away and pretends to be cleaning itself, but we all know the cat is trying to fake the squirrel out. The cat's tried faking it out about four times now. The squirrel is still cussing like a sailor, by the way. The crowd can't decide who they like better: everyone feels for the squirrel having lost its dinner (who doesn't love a good bagel?), and we are very impressed by its ferocious vocabulary. But everyone feels for the cat, too: the squirrel is damned annoying, and hey a cat's gotta eat, right?
At one point a girl goes up and, in a misguided attempt at positive intervention, tears the bagel into three pieces to make it easier for the squirrel to drag back up the tree. As if the squirrel were coming down now; that's exactly what the cat would want him to do! But anyone going near the bagel scraps (cat or human) makes the squirrel bark even louder, leaping from branch to branch as if movement is required because sound alone couldn't convey the poor thing's righteous fury and indignation. Later a group of people start petting the cat, playing with it a ways away to distract it and give the poor squirrel a chance at the bagel, but the squirrel isn't taking the bait: it knows that as soon as it goes to the ground that cat will be off toward it like a shot, human petting or not.
After about ten minutes of this display, when neither squirrel nor cat has gotten his dinner and neither animal appears willing to give up and go home, I throw in the towel and continue on to the cafeteria, leaving the screaming tree-climber and adorable kitten to their business while I pursue my own. After all: a girl's gotta eat, right?
But I tell you, it was the funniest shit I'd seen in weeks...
