It’s a dewy September morning. As the sun peers over the Wren Chapel, you assume another beautiful day has begun. Looking over the Sunken Garden and the muddy divots made by frisbee fanatics, you catch a glimpse of a fidgeting McDonalds’ bag. With a Rainbow sandal gripped in one hand and your heart in another, you approach the paper phantom with caution.
p. With the sandal you poke the bag. What trembles out of the lip of the Happy Meal leaves you breathless. It’s a bleary-eyed squirrel with dried saliva cobwebbed in its nappy brown hair. His chilling stare looks past you before a final whimper as he collapses into the same land in which he once buried his nuts. Type two diabetes has claimed another creature of the wild.
p. With the onset of another academic year, what spells 15 pounds for collegiate teens nationwide means death by glucose for God’s less bipedal creatures.
p. I draw attention to the College specifically because it deals a double blow to its woodland friends. Not only do the furry felines and rambunctious rodents suffer from the half-eaten Wawa sandwiches, there is a preponderant supply of stale cornbread and ginger beer provided by our time-capsule tourist attraction, Colonial Williamsburg. Nine months of college junk food plus 12 months a la colonial equals 21 months out of 12 where Bambi’s friends lapse into comas.
p. But I digress here. In my column about the Wren cross last year, I offered little solution, as I found it simply God’s matter to resolve; however, as that same Lord above let Adam name the animals, I am here to name the solution.
p. First and foremost, I think we can all agree that the current dumpsters are a dramatic strain on our senses. Newly constructed waste receptacles will be made out of pure Nalgene in a robotically vacuumed chamber. Squirrels will not be able to get in or out. Each bin will have a scanner akin to the College’s dorm entrances, and will require proper student ID (as well as proper licensing and waste-disposal training).
p. I find the recycling at the College vastly inadequate as well. It’s only a means of helping the libbys sleep well with their “eco-friendly” contrivance while the money-snorting capitalists still burn the trash in the same furnace. New subdivisions must be made for waste. There will be the standard: paper, plastic and aluminum. But within those categories will be A-, B- and C-types. A-types will stand for glucose-contaminated, B-types for lactose and gluten and all C-types will be for the germ and venereal-tainted.
p. At this point you must certainly think, “But Mr. PETA — what if this isn’t foolproof and I, myself, am a fool?” Obviously I’ve thought of this as well. Effective immediately, every student at the College will receive one bamboo shoot and an insulin blow dart. GER eight has been added to graduation requirements featuring classes in squirrel resuscitation and Aiming 101.
p. The best alternative, though, remains the same — whether food or trash, don’t feed the animals. You never know when they’ll drop dead.
p. __Daniel Wolfe is a sophomore at the College.__