2005-0002a Data Entry

• 4/17/04 7:13 PM
• 6 subject approach obstacle zone
• Intervals of 2 minutes
• Length of stay 16 minutes
• Ground penetration 5 centimeters
• 4 Poles touched
• No plates activated
• Food: assorted mix
• Fragrance injection “Cinnamon 0992”
• Sound high triangle
  
  2005-0002b
• Ramp added to left drop zone (angle N/A texture N/A)
• Cross pole added to base (angle 32 texture bamboo)

Data entered by Jill C.

Experiment 2005-0002a

Before I receive any negative e-mails, like last year, I must tell you that experiments 2005-0001 - 2005-0005 will not have any diagrams, material lists, images, or instructions. These are the fearless five. I gather my baseline data with these experiments to build a foundation that I can build my grand assumption. With last years theory I proved that squirrels do not like eat within a fire ring they would rather work to fill, aim and spray several squirt guns with the correct liquid. Several of the liquids would cause the fire to spread.

0002 needed to be modified because the current squirrel batch is drastically less intelligent than previous years. Several alternate solutions were provides and will be taken away one by one to see if this is merely just a hiccup of shyness on the part of the animals. Notes will follow.

Experiment Names

I keep experiment names in this simple format:
[The current year] - [number between 0001-9999][optional letter a-z]
For example 2005-0016 would be experiment 16 of this year. If I modify the experiment in any way it gets a letter 2005-0016a the next completely different experiment would be 2005-0017 and so on. Last year I was up to 2004-0072j.


Max
http://squirrelproject.blogspot.com/

Sour but Sweet

Even though the class was 6 people lighter it never got any better. Basically I weeded out the naiveté of the bunch. I started to show my documentary footage of my Obstacle Courses. A woman in the back said, “please stop the DVD it is making me sick”. I turned on the lights and asked if it was because the screen was flashing between scenes (I tend to use “white flashes” between cuts if I am removing uninteresting or lengthy footage) or if the projector refresh rate needed to be adjusted (Some people are photosensitive. For them, flashing lights or flickering images can trigger seizures or create patterns on the electroencephalogram (EEG) that are typical of epilepsy).

She said, “No, it’s making me sick that you are doing that to animals”. At that point I lost it. I said, “Why did you come?!?! The class was called squirrels and how they conquer obstacles”. She replied, “you are exploiting them, you are no better than beekeepers”. Shaking my head, I took the DVD out from my player and started packing up. Then I asked, “how do they exploit them?” The young women said, “The honey that bees make is for their own purposes. When we remove honey from the hive, we take something that is not rightfully ours. Plus to get it, beekeepers must remove bees from their homes. We cannot avoid squashing, or otherwise killing some of the bees. The vegan position on honey is definitive” I asked, “you’re a vegan?” She continued, “Yes, Yes, I am, and additionally Honey was prohibited for use by vegans according to the 1944 manifesto of the British Vegan Society, a position consistent with the requirement for full membership in the American Vegan Society since its inception in 1960.” With my hands hold my head I said, “You guys have a manifesto, actually I don’t care... it’s time for lunch.”

** After Lunch **

Miss Thing walks in eating Chicken McNuggets (ironic since we are at a bird enthusiast gathering) I say, “Hey?! Look what you’re eating!!!” She says extremely seriously, “This is not sweet and sour sauce; there is no honey in this! Hello? It’s BBQ!” I said, “I’m sorry I didn’t hear what you said I was admiring your gorgeous leather purse.”

Who are “They”?

Every question from these bird people began with “they say” …. “They say I should put black pepper into my nuts to keep the squirrels out, is this true?” “They say squirrels have an 80% chance of having rabies, so I should shoot them” “They say that if I hang a yellow scarf next to my feeder, the squirrels will think it's a large cat and not go near the food”

With a little bit of a grin, I know this is partially my fault, I said “a yellow scarf?” (And there was a little bit if a laugh in my voice) The older gentleman got a little agitated at my question and proceeded to explain to me what a scarf was in a very condescending manner. I swallowed that, but when he got to explaining what the color yellow was, I had to do something.
This was not how I wanted to start the class. So I said “I apologies for laughing, I didn’t mean any disrespect”. In a slightly frightened but stern voice I asked “Sir, tell me you did not hang a yellow scarf near or around your bird feeder?” He nodded yes. I said “yellow is to a squirrel is like red is to a bull (Note: bulls are colorblind and they react to the motion of the cape not the color but I think these bird people got the picture). I continued to say “yellow will cause something know as “fury frenzy” if two or more squirrels are within 25 feet of each other making those 80% rabid squirrels infuriated and the only thing that could make it worst?”. I looked back at class full of blank faces and said “pepper”. 6 people got up and left the class.

BTW: Yellow scares the crap out of squirrels.

No Class

Did I walk into a blood bath! These “bird people” are extremely malicious. I enter the classroom and people begin whispering very very loud “spspspppspp that’s the guy sspspspsp”. I hate the sound of whispering, especially bad, loud, I can see you type whispering. It’s like you’re whispering because you know you’re saying stuff you really shouldn’t and you want me to kind of hear it.

Lecture: Squirrels 101

Today I will be giving a lecture on my Squirrel findings to a bird enthusiast community in Providence, RI. Although my love for birds consists of mainly eating them, it is a paying job so I took it.

There is a lot of miss information about squirrels – I call them “rodent rumors”. I’m sure I’ll have to handle some negative questions about squirrels getting into their fancy feeder eating their expensive bird food meant for red-breasted-what-evers or yellow-tailed-who-cares. These are the same people who don’t like even native “plain” birds that eat the food meant for the snobby birds. They also whine when the birds they DO like eat the food but shit on the feeder. They think these birds should develop manners and be grateful because they are feeding them the (how do birds know) finest grains and find another place to drop. Did you know that birds pee and poop at the same time? The smooth white goop is the urine, and the center dark mass sometimes granular but smells like a beef soup is the feces.

Enough about birds back to “rodent rumors”
Many think there are three “types” of squirrels - the flying squirrel the tree squirrel and the ground squirrel. But in fact there is over 14 different types of squirrel most of which can be found in the northeast part of the United States. Along with the three listed above there is the Rock, High Grass, Low Grass and the 5 toed squirrel. This is not to be confused with the “species”. There are over 100-120 in Rhode Island alone.

Most squirrels eat raw meat and sometimes fish not nuts, seeds, grain, and fruit like you see on TV cartoons. I was surprised by the amount of fish they eat because it was thought that they were poor swimmers. The fact is squirrels are better swimmers then they are climbers.