Squirrel-a-Whirl Massacree
(By: J.C. Graham)
Dear Dave,
Sorry I've been out-of-touch, Old Buddy, but we haven't had power these past few weeks, ever since the unfortunate Squirrel-A-Whirl Incident (which shortly I'll recount to you), so of course e-mail has been out of the question. Truth be told, the computer system has been up again since last Monday, but I've been so preoccupied coping with the chaos in the backyard, and our home's wiring system, that this is the first chance I've gotten a chance to write you a note explaining what's been going on with us. I think that you'll agree that the course to our mishaps began innocently enough.
One day in early May, after work, Jill and I stopped by Buck-Moore Feed and Seed, to pick up a bag of seed for our doves (you remember: Pico and the gang). Casually looking around the shop, as the helpful attendant went to get a 50 lb. sack of Ful-O-Pep Parakeet Mix from the back, I noticed on a shelf by the front window, packaged in a box, the "Squirrel-A-Whirl" contraption. On the front of the box there was a picture of a cute squirrel evidently swinging around on a wooden dowel as the little fellow attempted to get to a ear of dried corn stuck onto the end of it. The picture showed three such baited dowels set out of a central rotating wheel.
"Keep squirrels away from your bird feeders, and have endless hours of entertainment yourself," I read on the box. "Squirrels love to ride the 'Squirrel-A-Whirl' (TM) as the little acrobats feed and enjoy being swung about on our patented 'Squirrel-A-Whirl' (TM) carrousel. (Place in part of yard away from bird feeders)."
And, in tiny letters at the bottom of the box: "Not responsible for any damage that may result from use of the 'Squirrel-A-Whirl' (TM) feeder. User assumes all liabilities."
"What damage?" I thought. "Maybe a squirrel might fall off, but his kin would be unlikely to sue." Little did I know...
Well I bought one of the Squirrel-A-Whirls, just out of curiosity, to see if it would work, and set it up attached to a telephone post in the far southwest corner of our backyard (far away from the bird feeder), baited as shown with ears of dried corn (also purchased at Buck-Moore).
And what do you know; it took about a day, but darned if a squirrel didn't start using the contraption! Just as described: The squirrel'd see the corn, jump from the back fence onto the pole, climb up the pole and out onto the support, inch out onto the dowel to get at the corn, nibble a bit, and s_w_i_n_g_ around clockwise until he was upside-down at the bottom of the "Squirrel-A-Whirl," whereupon he'd climb back up to the support and repeat the process on the next dowel. It sure did look like fun for him, and Jill and I were delighted!
In fact, it worked a little too well: After a week or so, there were maybe a dozen or more squirrels, I presume from all over the greenbelt behind the little creek on the edge of our yard, and there were squabbles and fights as they all tried to get to the front of the "Squirrel-A-Whirl" line. The amazing thing was that the "Squirrel-A-Whirl" held up just fine, even as it spun around like crazy with two or even three squirrels hanging onto to it for dear life! What a show... but I was having to bait the darned thing at least twice a day (and three or more times on the weekends when I was able to do that), and also all the squirrels' antics were driving crazy our two dogs, Ralph and Sandy (both large rottweilers), in their run on the other side of the yard.
Well, the popularity of our "Squirrel-A-Whirl" got me to thinking. You know I've always been a bit of a tinkerer, Dave, and I came up with a plan. Back to Buck-Moore Feed and Seed: I bought nine more of the Squirrel-A-Whirls (the remainder of their stock) and a big bag of the dried corncobs; they were happy to sell them to me. Then to Furrows, where I got lumber, wiring, batteries, and some other electrical equipment.
It took me a couple of weeks of hard work, but by the end of May I had the system set up: A series of ten poles topped with "Squirrel-A-Whirls," each hooked to a generator and wired together into a transformer, and then into 9-volt batteries that fed into the house. It actually was a bit more complicated than that, but you get the idea: Those squirrels would whirl around, that'd generate the electricity that got fed into the main line, and then stepped-down into 9-volt batteries that augmented the household power system. I was pleased with myself, and Jill was impressed with my ingenuity: We had squirrels powering most of the appliances in our home!
The system worked fine, but still (I could tell by looking at the electric meter) we were pulling some power from Austin Utilities. My confidence was high, though, from the success of the Squirrel-A-Whirl Electrical System, so I got to thinking some more, and devised what I thought was a clever add-on. You see, I considered that the wild birds really weren't "pulling their weight" around here, so I thought about how to incorporate them into the system, and finally came up with a way to do just that.
Back to Furrows for more lumber and wiring, and then to Buck-Moore for six bird-feeders and 200 lbs. of Sunscratch Mixed Seed (I thought that Mr. Buck looked at me a little strangely, but he didn't say anything other than "Well, thank you" as he accepted my check). Back at home, I set up floodlights in the backyard and worked through the night, skipped work the next day (using a day of my annual leave), and worked on until about 10:00 P.M. of the next night before collapsing into bed - but it was worth it, I'd set up a kind of bird-feeder-carrousel that would augment our backyard power supply... to what extent I didn't yet know.
The set-up was this: There was a large carrousel set on a tall post, and around the rotating circle of it were set the six bird feeders, hanging from chains. The bird feeders on the left were covered with little hoods that were automatically removed as the bird feeders went over the top, so that the feeders on the right were uncovered. As birds would land on the bird feeders on the right their weight would swing the wheel around clockwise, and I'd set it up so that the carrousel worked as a pump. Standing water from the creek (which doesn't really flow much) was gradually pumped up to a holding tank I'd set up in our yard. Whenever the tank got full, a switch would release the outflow gate, and the water would surge back down into the creek, in the process spinning a little water-wheel I'd put on the chute, which powered a generator and fed electricity into the backyard system.
Remarkably, this setup worked okay; I even had to buy more batteries to handle the load! Now our electric bill would be practically nil, I reckoned. Maybe I could even power an electric car someday, I was thinking.
I was proud of my invention, and before long neighbors and their children from all around Southeast Austin were visiting in the evenings to watch the squirrels spinning and birds riding around-and-around. Some evenings Jill would make ice cream, and we'd all sit and chat until after the fireflies came out.
Neighborhood cats, too, a dozen or more at a time (including several feral ones from the greenbelt), were fascinated by the action in our backyard, and took to sitting in wait under the Squirrel-A-Whirl posts, hoping that a squirrel would fall (which did not seem to happen to their liking). Ralph and Sandy were beside themselves, but all they could do was run back-and-forth in their dog-run, barking, attached as they were by leashes strung to wires which ran between two tall posts.
My head was filled with visions of renown, and I was considering submitting a descriptive article to Popular Mechanics (or some such magazine), the evening The Inspector showed up here.
"We have heard," he began, after showing me his identification as I opened the front door, "that there is an unauthorized electrical system in your backyard here. I have come to verify if that is so." He did not appear to be friendly as he spoke.
I shrugged. What could I do? I took the man to the backyard, through the small crowd of happy neighbors in lawn chairs, and meekly pointed to the squirrels whirling, birds riding around, cats waiting to pounce, dogs running back and forth barking, and floodlights shining. I hoped that maybe he would be impressed with my ingenuity and might start the ball rolling for me to get some contract with the city to set up similar systems in poor neighborhoods, but that did not happen.
Instead, The Inspector did not look pleased at all. In fact, he scowled. His face appeared to be reddening. I quickly dismissed the idea of offering him some of Jill's wonderful peach ice cream, made with fresh Fredericksburg peaches.
I believe that it's a corollary of Murphy's Law that not only whatever can go wrong will, but that it will go wrong in the worst possible way at the worst possible time. That certainly was demonstrated in our backyard that evening a few weeks ago.
The Inspector slowly looked around at all of the people, squirrels, birds, cats, and dogs, practically all of them in motion.
"This is....this is..." The Inspector sputtered. His unpleasant features were building with rage. He visibly struggled, searching for some word or phrase that would adequately characterize what "this was." He did not find such a descriptor in time.
I now will attempt to describe to you what next transpired, my friend, but please bear in mind that though I shall try to do so as quickly and as matter-of-factly as possible, what actually happened that night happened much more quickly than it can be told, and no one there reacted with any matter-of-fact equanimity.
Though it seems unlikely (even now as I recount it), as The Inspector stood there sputtering, searching for just the right phrase with which to condemn my efforts and my installation, a large owl swooped down toward the backyard from the high tip of a tree in the greenbelt. To the best of my knowledge such had not happened before here, but perhaps it was only a matter of time until it did; the whirling squirrels must have appeared to that raptor to be an inviting rotisserie, serving to its order.
In any case, the owl silently glided down and sank claws of both feet into a particularly unfortunate squirrel as it whirled about alone on the Squirrel-A-Whirl on the farthest post, next to the dog-run. Not that it was a lucky owl either: Evidently one or more of its claws sank also through the electrical wiring attached to the base of the squirrel-laden dowel, which immediately electrocuted it, freezing it to the squirrel, contraption, and all. For a short while the roasted bird and squirrel both swung around-and-around the sparking Squirrel-A-Whirl, carried by the owl's great momentum, until I, quick-thinking, raced over to the emergency cut-off switch I'd thoughtfully installed at the base of each pole, and cut off the juice to that particular Squirrel-A-Whirl.
It seemed like a good idea at the time, but there is no way that I could have anticipated what happened next. Power cut-off, the owl was released from the electricity's death-grip, as was the squirrel from the owl's. The owl, still carried by the conserved force of its original swoop, was hurled across the yard until, as fate would have it, it struck The Inspector full in the face, knocking him unconscious. He collapsed to the ground.
Meanwhile, the trajectory of the dead squirrel was such that it plummeted straight to the ground at the base of the pole. Something like this is what all the cats had been hoping for those weeks, and they rushed the squirrel's corpse from nearly every direction.
That was more than the rottweilers could take, and, in tandem, with all of their force, they lunged toward the pack of cats. Regrettably, their concerted strength was enough to pull the metal dog-run post out of the ground, and it tipped over into the nearest Squirrel-A-Whirl pole, causing it also to fall. As that pole fell, domino-like, five more of the poles toppled over in quick succession, the last of them sideways, into the bird-feeder-carrousel, which itself tipped over, toppling into the elevated water tank, which spilled its load in a deluge that swept under the transformer, shorting it out in a flurry of sparks. At the same time, the live wires of the Squirrel-A-Whirl Poles crossed and shorted, causing a quick fire, which caught the remaining standing poles ablaze, and carried even to the telephone wire, which melted and fell. Out went all the lights, and all power, for that matter.
The neighbors fled in a panic, and Jill and I were left standing in the ruins of our backyard, over the body of the unconscious Inspector, for whom we could not call 911 for help, we soon discovered, because the phone no longer was working.
I later learned that the electrical surge from our mishap fried-out not only the wiring of our house, but also some 9,000 homes and businesses in the area; it was reported on the nightly television news.
We drove the unconscious Inspector to Brackenridge Hospital, where he recovered from the concussion he received from the thrown owl. Though we will have to pay his hospital bills, we're told, they are not high compared to the damages to the city electrical system that city lawyers are insisting we must pay, not to mention the damages to our own home, which still we are fixing. And just yesterday we were contacted by a polite man from Texas Fish and Wildlife, who's duty it was to point out to us that the felled owl was of a protected species, and that we may have felony charges of endangering such filed against us shortly. I think we will both have to get second jobs, at night.
I salvaged four of the cursed Squirrel-A-Whirls from the wreckage, and attempted to return them, but Mr. Buck said that the thirty-days within which I could do that had passed. So that's why I have them boxed up and ready to send to you, Dave, if you'd like to give them a whirl in your own backyard. Let me know if you would; if so, I'll send them immediately. Be forewarned, however, that they can lead to a whirl of events far beyond what their unsuspecting owner could imagine.
Best regards to you and your family; I hope that you all are well.
J.C.
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