Breaking news: humans more intelligent than we thought

Bella Loxtercamp – Squirrel Investigator

The following message comes from a news article written by the squirrels. Gustavus’s branch of the Federal Squirrel Investigation (FSI) intercepted and translated it early this morning. It may be unsettling to some readers. Proceed at your own risk.

Education is good. You didn’t need me to tell you that. Video games don’t give the same salaries, job opportunities, or futures that educThe following message comes from a news article written by the squirrels. Gustavus’s branch of the Federal Squirrel Investigation (FSI) intercepted and translated it early this morning. It may be unsettling to some readers. Proceed at your own risk.
The humans are on to us.
We’re not sure how they’ve done it, but somehow, they know. An article published in a newspaper they call the Weekly, made from the ruins of our homes, details our plots to overthrow. The author of the article has been snooping around for weeks, and now it’s been revealed that she is an agent of the FSI. She has eyewitnesses who caught Twiggy and Scrat acting “rogue”. Where, then, did she get her other information? There’s a theory that we have a mole in the rebellion. At one of our gatherings, eyewitness testimony places Samantha, newbie squirrel, by the human leader Ms. Bergman’s window. Perhaps Samantha and Ms. Bergman are in cohorts. Who better to inform the humans of our happenings than their leader herself?
The article has brought much-unwanted attention to us. We’re told we’re celebrities on campus. What’s worse, it calls us “adorable”. Are we nothing but a joke? We work much harder than they could ever know. Apart from gathering food and keeping our species alive, we must fight these humans every day for our land. They come at our busiest time of year, and they never leave. We try to expel them.
We’ve created the Study Abroad Program as a win-win situation–we get humans off our campus, they get to go become better humans–but it has not been nearly as robust as it should be. In Texas, we tried planting a governor with outrageous ideas to create rioting, but not nearly as many people reacted as we had hoped. Humans, as shown in Texas, are not always intelligent. We’ve tried everything we could possibly try, but when we do anything, they just point at us with their rectangular boxes and make strange noises. This, my friends, is the harm in being seen as “adorable”.
Not only do we have to fight the humans, but we are also at war with the hawks. Rocky was almost picked up by one just yesterday. There were countless humans around, but the hawk was not afraid of these live scarecrows. It swooped down and missed Rocky by inches. Head Squirrel found him twitching in the bushes, chomping frantically at a small acorn. He couldn’t chirp for hours. He’s still not the same. It’s a rough world out there for squirrels– humans, hawks, we’re barely surviving.
Sandy would know what to do, as she helped us defeat the humans in her hometown of Texas, but as you know, she is currently on a mission. While we take over on land, she has graciously agreed to work under the sea. Instead, we have Gerald. Gerald, a newcomer to the uprising, encountered the author face-to-face. He had her cornered beneath a tunnel by the library. But what did he do? She was frozen, vulnerable, but he got scared. He ran away. “She’s much taller than we thought,” he defended himself in interview. I will give him the benefit of the doubt; None of us have ever come so close to defeating one of them. Poor Gerald could understandably not handle the stress.
Head Squirrel held an emergency press conference just days after the release of the detrimental article. He addressed his concerns to a crowd of us in the Arb. “I fear the timeline for our plans has shifted,” he said in a mournful chirp. Chatter broke over the crowd. Even Gerald looked stunned. Nobody spoke, not even Head Squirrel. A few squirrels munched on acorns, sharpening their teeth. Someone yelled, “Well, what’s the new plan?”
Head Squirrel took a breath, and as the chatter died down, he divulged us all the gory, exciting details.