Audio Up Your Ass (Squirrel Edition)

Aloha Gheorghies! As yesterday's report card can attest, I haven't been writing much of late. Instead of churning out my award-winning sentences and opinions, I've been listening to podcasts and recording audio, but I recently stumbled upon some pressing squirrel related material which I just had to relate to y'all. But once I finish this post, I'll probably go back to the audio. I just don't have the attention span to sit still. This is actually getting worse as I get older (I thought it was supposed to fade). Perhaps audio is the right choice anyway. I'm almost fifty, and there's certainly a greater chance that I'll go deaf-- or at least suffer some serious hearing loss-- before I go blind (there should be odds on this). So I'd better enjoy the audio while I still can. 

And no doubt, it's a great time to enjoy audio. All the music is available. It's what my generation imagined when we were kids, spending our hard earned money on CDs (only to sell them back to the local record store weeks later). In addition to this vast array of streaming music, we're also living in the Golden Age of Podcasts.

Our audio cup runneth over.

And one of my favorite podcasters, Roman Mars-- he of the golden mellow baritone-- has recently informed me that amongst all this abundance, we are also living in the Golden Age of Squirrels.

Yes Rob, The Golden Age of You. What a time to be alive.

The new episode of 99% Invisible is cleverly titled "Uptown Squirrel," but a more apt description might be: 

"Everything You Wanted to Know About Squirrels But Were Afraid to Ask (or wouldn't even think of asking, because no one ever thinks about squirrels . . . though we do occasionally think about Squirrel."

Rob, I urge you to listen to this thing.

I learned so much about squirrels during this podcast. Mainly, I learned that though I have constant (and rather embattled) daily contact with squirrels (my dog Lola wants to eat all of them) I know very very little about these furry critters.

Squirrels are always underfoot, but despite their ubiquity, we don't even know the basics. For example, how many squirrels live in Central Park? 

To ascertain this, you need to take a squirrel census.  The squirrel census will eventually be plugged into a wildlife counting formula and reveal the coveted "squirrel abundance number." Roman Mars claims that the method of reaching the "squirrel abundance number" was created by "mid-century Danish-American squirrel biologist Van Fleeger." 

I googled the shit out of this guy and could find nothing on this person. Nothing related to squirrel biology, nothing related to the squirrel abundance number, nothing nothing nothing. I don't even think "Van Fleeger" is a name. While I generally trust Roman Mars . . . probably because of that trademark mellow baritone, I think the 99% Invisible interns may have fabricated this Van Fleeger. Roman Mars demanded some cutting edge squirrel research and they had to produce. Van Fleeger the Danish-American squirrel biologist? Sounds legit. Who's going to check up on that?

Regardless of the existence or nonexistence of this particular squirrel biologist, there's plenty of good, verifiable stuff in this episode.

Such as this shocker: once upon a time, squirrels were reclusive creatures. You could only find them deep in the forest. They avoided humans. In the 1800s, rich folks kept them as exotic pets. In 1856, a Manhattanite's squirrel got loose and climbed a tree and police had to disperse the crowd that assembled to gawk at the agile little critter. These days it would take a whole troop of monkeys to galvanize that kind of crowd. But in 1856, it only took a squirrel.

At first, squirrels had a hard time in the city. There weren't enough trees. But once we started preserving larger natural spaces within city bounds, and planting more trees, the squirrels could make it. They had to be introduced. This is mind-blowing. Cities were once squirrel-less. Philadelphia was the first city to add squirrels (in 1847). People enjoyed feeding them. Like pigeons, they were cute peaceable animals, and city-dwellers anthropomorphized them: they were regarded as wonderful animal citizens. Those were the day when it was perfectly acceptable to shoot a hawk or an eagle or a wolf or a coyote . . . because they were mean, vicious predators. Meanwhile, people were loving the squirrels and pigeons. Then crows and raccoons and possums moved in, and people revised their opinions on predators. They realized they were necessary. Now peregrine falcons and red-tailed hawks nest on skyscrapers and cull the exploding squirrel population. It's a much healthier and biologically diverse situation.

BUT the squirrels haven't given up all their power. They are still more dangerous than Russian hackers and wily terrorists in one regard: their attacks on our power grid. There's a web site devoted to this: CyberSquirrel1.

If you don't feel like listening to a podcast about squirrels, you could check out two newish tracks I put up on Soundcloud. Listen to the audio before you go deaf!

One of the great things about audio is you can't tell how ugly a space it was recorded in. For instance, I work in this lovely studio:

Greasetruck Studio

Right now I'm calling my music project Park the Bus (the same as my blog) but I'm looking for a new, cooler sound name. Something that evokes the future while embracing our hirsute analog animal past. I'm taking suggestions. Winner gets a prize.

The first of my newish songs is a combination of Willie Nelson and Cormac McCarthy's take on "the road."



The second song is a shorter and better remix of a song about simians that I've been monkeying around with forever.



Both songs are SFW and I appreciate the listens. I think soon enough our man in the field Whitney is going to post some audio as well. He needs to post a picture of his studio, as it looks far nicer than mine (but after we have our giant garage sale, I'm really going to clean my studio up. It's going to be beautiful . . . absolutely gorgeous. I've got a real eye for that sort of thing).