The Squirrel Bomb (For Posterity)

Approximate location.
Courtesy campusexplorer.com
In 2002 -- this is now twelve years ago (!?) -- I had thrown at me what I affectionately refer to as a "Squirrel Bomb". 

I was walking past a garbage receptacle on the busy patio of my liberal-arts college, when some unknown scholar stopped in his tracks ahead of me, he turned to face me. I slowed my gait as his focus in my direction seemed fairly intentional. He pulled back his right arm which held a mostly-full water bottle as if to telegraph a pass in my direction. Is he about to throw a heavy water-bottle at me? Is this one of those college things? Was I about to be recruited by some esoteric fraternal guild?


Well actually, he pitched a fastball at the garbage receptacle which was located a mere arm's length to my right. The disposable bottle--full of momentum-generating H2O--slammed against the hollow, squared cylinder with thunderous resound. As no fewer than nine (9) squirrels jettisoned out on all sides and in all directions, I reflexively shrieked like a little girl. 

I had never up to that moment had ANY squirrels nearly that close to me, and now I had a nearly double-digit flock (or whatever the hell their dumb group is called) moving quickly around me in in wildly unpredictable trajectories. I continued to shriek like some 6 year old who just watched her favorite doll be decapitated by wolves, and after the shock wore off, I giggled foolishly at the unprecedented spectacle of having been made into some weird Buster Keaton sight-gag. 

Comments