Blame It On The Squirrel

I hereby blame all of New London’s problems on a squirrel, pictured here.

Why? Well, why not? The city and state and nation are constantly going through ups and downs, and for every down there’s a lot of finger pointing as to who deserves the blame. On the local level, I’ve seen practically everyone who’s been elected to office in the past or present and everyone who gets a paycheck from the city blamed as being the source of all of New London’s troubles, ever.

This, of course, generally ignores the fact that any government is a rather intricate mechanism and requires the work of multiple people, organizations, and factors to work. Or, you know, shamble along in some semblance of functionality.

For all the political disagreements in New London, I’ve never seen any evidence that people in local government are doing anything but working to do what they think is best for the city. Or as a friend once said, “No one wakes up thinking, ‘How can I screw over New London today?’”

Most readers of this site aren’t shy about expressing their political opinions and are often vehement about one issue or another, but often times they’ll make a concession or two to a political enemy. Several have also expressed frustration at the current state of local politics. One reader said that people seem too content to give weight to conspiracy theories; another said they were upset at the level of “petty politics” and inability of various entities to get along.

So in the interests of moving forward, I thought I’d offer up Blame Squirrel as a scapegoat. Or scape-squirrel, as it were.

It’s not as crazy as you might expect. Squirrels have been blamed for countless power outages and fires. This squirrel in South Carolina apparently chooses who becomes President of the United States. I stumbled across one political forum related to Sierra Leone where a person commented that one faction had only “yourself and your so-called trusted officials and squirrel flagbearer for your penury morass.” Note to readers: that is how you do flame other users with your anonymous online rhetoric. Pick up the thesaurus and I’ll love you all the more.

But back to Blame Squirrel. Can we pin the state of the city’s finances on him? Well sure, if he’s causing all those fires that must contribute to the overspending that occurred in the fire department. And perhaps he’s pulling a few strings at the state level to make sure state funds are going toward acorn preservation programs instead of municipal aid.

The fact that New London’s schools need improvement? Well, of course that’s Blame Squirrel. What student, faced with a choice of a brain-freezing lesson on pre-calculus, isn’t going to seek distraction in watching Blame Squirrel play and do acrobatics at the window?

Blame Squirrel simply must be holding training courses for people involved in criminal practices in town. Squirrels have brains that are 200 times less massive than the human brain. Who else but Blame Squirrel could have suggested that it would be a good idea to carry a flat-screen TV around in the middle of the night in hopes of selling it for cocaine?

The New London Irish Parade is holding its event outside of the city this year. It’s not really the fault of the mayor or parade committee or any city department. It’s just that members of the animal kingdom are pretty tight and they have long memories, and Blame Squirrel no doubt took some ironic pleasure in driving the parade out of town as St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland.

So what can we do? How do we free ourselves from the degrading influence of this malevolent rodent who is causing so many problems for the city?

Well, a cursory search of YouTube brings up plenty of videos of “squirrel-apults” made out of bungee cords, a small basin, and a lure of birdseed. Just rig one of those up and bam: Blame Squirrel winds up in the Thames. Or he becomes a problem in Groton or Waterford.

Whatever the case, we get rid of that meddling little fellow and start taking responsibility for ourselves again.

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