A Modest Proposal
I have a modest proposal for the university community to consider. In the next few years, it looks like the U will be facing serious financial difficulties as swashbucklin' Gov. Pawlenty slashes budgets like the smiley face guy cuts prices at Walmart. You may know Pawlenty best as the guy who makes you long for the days when a former professional wrestler was governor. Don't quote me on this, but I'm pretty sure the budget for the next two years has an allotment of thirty cents for building repair. This budget problem is possibly the number one issue facing the university.
Let me switch gears for a second here (you'll see where I'm going if you hang in there). Now, one of the U's other major problems (number two if you ask me), is squirrel overpopulation. Let me give you some fictional statistics to back up my claim:
- There are 1800 squirrels for every student on the Twin Cities campus
- One-third of these squirrels commute from nearby suburbs (this doesn't relate to anything else, but its funny to picture squirrels coming in with lunch pails, punching in at 6 every morning)
- Campus squirrels are scientifically proven to be the ugliest squirrels in existence. They're all lumpy from malnutrition, and they look like they got their fur trimmed at Great Clips (sorry, personal vendetta).
- Campus squirrels are ridiculously aggressive due to overpopulation and underfeeding. Once, a squirrel stole my Nature Valley granola bar at knifepoint. While armed robbery is infrequent, pushing and shoving are quite common. On a scale of -8 to 2, an average squirrel is -4, while a campus squirrel is 1. For comparison's sake, the only known animals with an agressiveness level of 2 are hyenas and
Chris Samp.
Feel free to leave any undocumented evidence in the comments section. Something must be done about this, or the squirrels will eventually be the dominant species on earth, and humans will be pushed down to number four. Squirrels get free reign on campus, and many even live here for free. But when
I fall asleep in the hedges ONE TIME with a hooker I get the third degree.
Now, I haven't seen the University's utility bill, but my guess is that a fair amount of money is spent on electricity. Squirrels spend all day running around looking for nuts, most of their energy completely wasted on their own well being. I say, lets put that energy to use. Heres the idea: We drastically reduce our payment to energy companies by setting up a room full of "hamster wheels" which are connected to generators. Since they are for squirrels, they will need to be bigger than hamster wheels. We then use the generators to make the electricity for the entire campus! Think of it: 1800 * 60000 = A lot of squirrels on wheels. The beautiful part is, we don't feed the squirrels! They still have to find their own food, so no fuels get wasted! This is so brilliant I can barely contain myself. I would love to write more, but I'm so psyched I'm going to go build a squirrel wheel generator. Have a good weekend.
Posted by mill1991 at June 11, 2004 6:34 AM