SQUIRREL NUT ZIPPERS

SQUIRREL NUT ZIPPERS

By Andrew Paul Grell

“Why not, Lloyd? If Julius Caesar had a horse with toes, why shouldn’t a squirrel have thumbs? DNA runs deep. We’re all walking around with ring-tail lemur and slow loris genes; they’re just not switched on. There are squirrels that fly; nobody thinks that’s odd because of Rocky the Flying Squirrel. There’s no cartoon about a squirrel with thumbs.” Janelle Jaeger was in charge of the Bronx Zoo’s Withit department, an attempted acronym of What the Heck is That. Lloyd Waner was the head groundskeeper of Minuet City in lower Manhattan, a park-like, 80-acre housing complex abutting both Midtown and the East River. Ironically, Lloyd’s eponymous relative, a baseball player, was nicknamed “the Little Poisoner.”

“Isn’t it also true that we share 50% of our genome with bananas? Anyway, Janelle, I don’t think Sciurus liphschitz is going to fly on this. Phil just called and complained that there was a dead squirrel in Playground 7, that the squirrels were getting bold, and that children played in that playground. You found the thumb. It should be Sciurus jaeger.”

“Let’s keep it simple. Sciurus pollex. Thumbed Squirrel. Who is that?”

“Where?”

“Green camo hoodie over a fly-fishing vest. On the grass in front of building 447, up against the bushes.”

“Oh. One of the squirrel people. I think her name is Edie, maybe Evie. They put out empty tuna cans with water, if it doesn’t rain, they refill them from canteens. Sometimes they open the exterior tap on a building near a concentration of nests. My crew picks up the cans, Then there are—or were—the peanut tossers. The complex is a park, you know.”

“Yes. With an ecosystem and a food chain. They aren’t really nuts.”

“The people, the squirrels, or the peanuts?”

“The peanuts. They’re legumes. The kits don’t recognize them as a food source; they learn to eat them from watching the older squirrels; you must have noticed that. The kits will instinctively go after acorns; chestnuts too, but there haven’t been many chestnut trees on the continent for a while. I see you have ineffective signs asking people not to feed the wildlife”

“Now that you mention it, I know what you’re talking about. And ineffective is right. We put them up because the squirrels are legally city property, and too many are obese. The city doesn’t like that.”

“Yes, Lloyd. One of my graduate students was on that survey. Like I say, it’s an ecosystem. People get pleasure feeding squirrels, which raises endorphin levels. The squirrels get fed. Or overfed. In ordinary circumstances, there’s a control valve to that. Sometimes someone tosses a few peanuts to a couple of squirrels, then an entire dray shows up and finally the whole clown car comes out of the trees. That’s usually enough of a shock for your casual tosser to take a break for a while. In addition to that, the more squirrels there are in an environment, the more the local dogs are going to want some hunting action, even if they’re on leash. We observed how close the average dog giving chase gets to the target. It was the same for both species, about eight inches. Pollex doesn’t have better anti-hunting tools than the greys.

“So. Janelle. Any ideas about what to do about the zipper problem?”

“Sure. There’s a protocol for things like this. I’ll be seconded to Minuet City along with that grad student, Pat, and a couple of zoo interns; you pick someone who reports to me and who I can tell what to do. And, oh, I’ll need a couple of blinds and some WiFi repeaters around the complex. Observe first, then hypothesize, then test, then plan. Easy Peasy.”

# # #

The meeting took place on the patio of the Ellipse Café near the center of the post-war Bauhaus housing development. They tessellated a few tables so the attendees could lay out their respective charts, graphs, and reports. The immediate situation had begun to stabilize, even though the Withit team had done little else but observe. Nevertheless, Lloyd and his crew were, if not exactly ecstatic, at least convinced that everyone was moving in the same, correct direction.

“Well, Lloyd, it’s been six weeks of covert observation. It yielded the emerging paradigm. Without a thumb, a squirrel could just annoy someone sitting on a bench or stand up and look imploringly starving. But a squirrel with a thumb could work a zipper. The little critters now had, so to speak, two avenues of gathering nuts. At the end of the initial observation period, almost everyone sitting on benches outside of the Minuet City playgrounds would have little bags of peanuts and toss them pre-emptively to avoid exposure, decent, indecent, or half decent. The initial period also tracked the squirrel people, Edie or Evie and seven other people variously ensuring water supplies and tossing peanuts. That part you already knew. But now we know that Sciurus pollex can learn, operate as a team, and, in their own way, negotiate a truce, such as it is. Also, we observed that the eight dedicated squirrel people were not operating as a team. Ellie—Pat learned that her name is Ellie—and the freakishly tall guy with the Mets cap, along with a suit who shows up from time to time, are only concerned with the new species. Pat also learned something else. S. pollex boars are going after S. carolinensis sows with an advantage over the boars with no thumbs. And the contrapositive is true as well; pollex sows can fend off the native boars. And get this. Kyle the intern was on watch and swears the Mets fan brought a couple of older kits into the complex. Something is going on. You folks know this is going to be much bigger than a rodent problem in a housing complex, right?”

“Hokie Dokie, Doc. So, what’s our next step?”

“We go on hiatus for three weeks so nobody gets to thinking we’re a permanent fixture. Then another six weeks of observation.”

“Anything special you’ll be observing?” Lloyd had never asked about the specifics of the observations before. As a good executive, he waited for the status reports and cherry-picked what he thought would be useful.

“We’re going to collect a few of the new species and some of the old and make some comparisons. And the results of the last estrus cycle will be showing up.” As a good scientist, Janelle believed that research should be shared.

# # #

Janelle postponed the next status meeting due to the intra-period shocking findings. Instead, she and her team took over a lab at the zoo and began to hash out the meaning of what they found. She handed Pat the mouse for the computer with the power point presentation, the intro slide of the deck projected on a screen. Pat smiled nervously while taking command of the meeting. This could be the start of a doctoral step up to the majors. Sam, the chief small-mammal vet, was in attendance, along with a half-dozen researchers, eager to see if the rumors were true. After the plebes were seated, Heinrich ten-Eck, Associate Director of the New York Zoological Society, the authorizing agency of the zoo, took a seat at the table.

The slide of two squirrels and the text “Comparison of Eastern Greys to novel S. Pollex in Minuet City, Manhattan” disappeared to be replaced with  slide with four photos, two comparing paw structures of the different species and another to pairs comparing brain structure, particularly the hippocampus and the foldings of the neocortex. Pat went through the steps of the differences in the anatomic details. That was all well and good. The next slide was the shocker.

“These are printouts of DNA analysis of the two species, specifically an area on chromosome 17.” The grad student was displaying pro-grade rhythm, pacing, and confidence. “The highlighted gene sequence is from the genus Plesiadapis. Everyone in the room except for Heinrich knew what that meant. A 60-million-year-old gene, a gene on a branch that led eventually to humans.

Click. “This is where things get interesting.” The slide showed the word “HELP” scratched into a bare patch on one of the lawns. Pat opened the attached video, shot while the pollex sow was being observed from a blind. “It gets better. This is the reason we’re meeting on the mainland rather than Manhattan Island.”

Click.  The slide showed a rough dirt-scratch sketch of Ellie with a diagonal slash across it and “HELP” under the image.

Click. A similar image but with Lloyd as the icon.

“But wait, there’s more. Make sure you’re sitting down, folks.

Click. Two images. A man with a bag of peanuts, one the of the non-aligned squirrel people. Next to that image was a shot of honey-gold peanut flowers.

“George here had decided to get raw peanuts for his bushy-tailed friends. We think that fertile peanuts, hulled by squirrels of either species, sprouted. We observed four “peanut farms” in Minuet City. Pollex may be there for a while. We all know that genetic mutations occur, and long dormant genes can be expressed. For example, the roach gene sequence for wings, functional or not, goes in and out of style. In this case, however, none of the WithIt team, myself included, believe that two such mutations could take place at the same time. The appendix of the briefing materials establishes why we believe that these mutations were the result of embryonic gene splicing. Here is the final slide. It shows the weekly headcount and daily statistical count of the pollex population. Thirty percent of the S. pollex population disappeared in three days. I’d like to introduce Kyle, our intern, who has a plan to find out what was going on.

“Thank you, Pat. My application for an intern position at the Bronx Zoo covered not only my love and respect for animals, but also my willingness to go to bat to protect them from abuse. I have contacts in PETA. Anyone here following animal news know how relentless PETA can be when it comes to finding out when and how animals are being abused. I request the authorization of the New York Zoological Society,” Kyle turned to look at Heinrich, “to proceed in the investigation of possible abuse this likely gene-edited new species may be suffering by the hands of their creators.” Kyle looked once again at Heinrich, who gave him the nod.

# # #

“All rise! The honorable Jacobus Braltz presiding.” Everyone stood up, including Lloyd and Ellie and the third defendant, Carter Hopkins, CEO of a recently chartered corporation, Bushy Tail Enterprises Inc.

“Ladies and gentlemen, a jury has already voted to convict the three defendants of animal cruelty. Their separate attorneys have each appealed that verdict, and the appeals court has sent the case back down to me for a new trial, a bench trial which has no jury, in order to avoid jury emotion overriding the law unfairly to the defendants. I have reached a decision which I will now read from the bench.

“Generally speaking, an owned animal is the property of its owner, who has a right to be in control of the animal. Control of the animal does not include torturing it, neglecting it, abandoning it, or abusing it sexually or otherwise. In addition, animals involved in commercial enterprises are subject to city, state, and USDA guidelines, rules, and regulations. Based on the evidence presented in the bench trial, defendants did not follow any of these rules and regulations. In addition, the work the squirrels were required to perform, assembling miniature components, was close to torture. Veterinary reports of the squirrels’ health showed a high percentage of carpal tunnel syndrome. Essentially, defendants did everything wrong with the exception of not sexually abusing their slave-animal workers.

“Finally, with respect to the defendants’ claim that the squirrels were well fed and well treated, I refer to the “testimony” of Scar, one of the Sciurus pollex captives. The prosecuting attorney placed a blank index card and a custom 1.75 centimeter pencil in his travel enclosure. Scar took the pencil and wrote, ‘HELP US JUDGE.” How could I refuse?

“It is the judgment of this court that defendants provide appropriate sanctuary for the captive squirrels, establish a settlement fund of three million dollars for emotional and other damage caused by the introduction of S. pollex to Minuet city, waive all proprietary rights to the pollex genome, and perform 200 hours of community service. Such service to be cleaning cages at animal shelters. In addition, defendant Waner, for his conspiracy to defraud his employer, will return two years’ salary to Minuet City”

The judge gave the gavel a good bang. “This court is now adjourned.”