Crackpot Theory: Squirrel Survey Setup

The other day, a friend of mine was walking on her squirrel ridden college campus (Incidentally, her university really chose the wrong mascot. Forget the bird, those squirrels are everywhere.)  and she came across a squirrel with a small tag attached to its ear, presumably the kind of tag attached to animals to monitor them for scientific purposes.

When she brought the tale of this squirrel to my attention, her chief curiosity was what people could possibly be studying the squirrels for. Which, to be fair, is curious enough. But in thinking about that question, I stumbled upon a largely and far more hilarious question: how did they get that tag on the squirrel?

Many of you are likely civilized folks with actual attention spans, and as such have never tried chasing a squirrel with the actual intention of catching it while walking around town. I am not a civilized person, and I have no attention span. In my defense, my cross country team had a rule that if you saw a squirrel during practice and caught it, you would be done for the day.

No one ever got the day off via squirrel, incidentally.

Squirrels are not easy to catch in a straight chase 'em down sort of way. Largely because before you can do that whole "run your prey to death" thing that humans are apparently capable of, squirrels will just scamper up a tree and laugh at your climbing incompetence. Stupid squirrels.

But really, if you needed to catch a squirrel, how would you do it? Maybe you'd use a tranquilizer dart gun. Probably the easiest, assuming that you're not a crap shot. But this is a college campus. These days, they're a bit jumpy about guns, weaponry, or anything remotely shaped like guns and weaponry.

An amusing theory we came up with initially was leaving a bowl of food out for the squirrels and spiking it with some sort of tranquilizer. Sure, you'd probably also tranq some poor sap looking to score a free meal, but it's just a tranquilizer. I'm sure they'll be fine after a few hours.

But then we came up with another idea, and idea so impossibly ridiculous, that it must be true.

It goes something like this.

You see, as much as they like to walk around grabbing table scraps off the ground or out of our hands, squirrels are still largely tree folk. Sooner or later, a squirrel will climb a tree. As a sidenote, I'm going to declare that today's indisputable fact and put it in very large, bold font for the world to behold.

"Sooner or later, a squirrel will climb a tree."

 The best way then, to catch a squirrel, my friend and I decided, would be to don an elaborate but comically low budget tree costume, stand very still in the middle of the squirrel infested campus, and wait for a squirrel to climb you.

Once a squirrel takes the bait, the next step is to simply yell "SURPRISE MOTHERF*CKER" as you grab them in a full bear hug and then forcibly attach the survey clip to its ear.

One can only imagine the psychological impact this would have on the subject squirrel, as for weeks after it can't bring itself to climb a tree out of fear and mistrust for the very foundations of truth it once believed the world operated on. It's other squirrel friends would try their best to rehabilitate him, but oh the work they would have for them.

JET: Come on Phil, you can do it. Climb the tree.

PHIL: NO! YOU DON'T KNOW MAN! YOU WEREN'T THERE!

JET: Phil, Phil! Take it easy. Here, look. I'll climb the tree first, and then you can follow.

*JET climbs the tree*

JET: See? It's harmless.

TREE: SURPRISE MOTHERF*CKER!