Tuesday, September 12, 2006

THE SQUIRRELS HAVE THE BOMB

By Templeton Steele

Everyone at the coffee shop was talking about the missile that had appeared overnight in the park. This was not just any missile: It was an intercontinental ballistic missile, with multiple nuclear warheads. And, as the townsfolk noted with no small amount of concern, the missile seemed to belong to a large family of squirrels.

No one knew much about these squirrels. They buried nuts, they dug up nuts, they scurried around – that was pretty much it. But now they also had a weapon of mass destruction, and while it seemed unlikely that the squirrels knew how to use it, no one was willing to rule out the possibility. After all, Bucky Johnson said, he had sealed up his attic last winter tight as a sumbitch, and they still found a way in.

A gloom settled in over the coffee shop. How this missile business would affect next weekend's Acorn Festival was anyone's guess.

(Author and retired three-star general Templeton Steele whiled away many an hour beneath Cheyenne Mountain with a bottle of Yukon Jack.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unless the brown squirrel clan is able to muster up enough computing power to go along with that nukular warhead-bearing missle, there isn't much chance of it affecting the Acorn Festival. See, they'd have a devil of a time pinpointing the trajectory to make it come down in the same general vicinity from which it was launched.
Nope, I'd say the only way that thing could affect this year's Acorn Festival would be the blast from the lauch, and that would probably just roast the acorns and make this festival the best ever!
'Course, that doesn't really answer the question not asked: Why? Why must these things always be reduced to issues of color? Does it really matter that they were BROWN squirrels?

Anonymous said...

The controversial "brown" reference has been removed, for I do not wish to receive another Molotov cocktail through my bedroom window. I had been referring merely to the brownish appearance of the Eastern Gray Squirrel, but that harmless reference has touched off a firestorm of discontent among the more radicalized members of the squirrel community, and now yours truly, Templeton Steele, seems to be a marked man.