We all know that squirrels are Honorary Cats™, and of course all cats are atheists, so it’s simple logic that all squirrels are atheists. If you require empirical rather than logical proof, look at this piece from the Telegraph with a funny headline:
The grim details:
Church bell-ringers will be silent at Christmas for the first time in centuries after their ropes were eaten – by squirrels.
St Erth Parish Church has held a festive service since the the 15th century but this year it will be silent – because of rodents in the belfry.
Church bell-ringers discovered its long pulling ropes lying on the floor – after the tops were chewed through by squirrels.
Verger Peter Pascoe, 71, is concerned that the church will not be able to perform the annual tradition.
Mr Pascoe has since installed a guard in the window to stop the squirrels getting in, but they have beaten it before and he fears the few remaining ropes may also be destroyed.
. . . “The bells have been ringing out for hundreds of years, it would be a shame if we weren’t able to ring them any more.
“Animals do get in there, usually birds, but I have never seen a squirrel in there before.
“They are a real menace.”
The church (all captions from the Torygraph):
The Remains of the Ropes:
What the squirrels did:
Maybe propitiation with walnuts would help. . .
Well, Puritans didn’t like Christmas, either, and weren’t atheists. Clearly, squirrels are Puritans.
That, sir, is a vile insult to squirrels. Atheists are fine with Christmas, as e.g. Richard Dawkins would tell you. It’s a long-established British institution that pre-dates Xtianity.
cr
But are these terrorist squirrels American (grey) squirrels or British (red) squirrels?
(Of course, ‘red’ squirrels would naturally be atheists).
cr
IIRC, reds, though smaller, can run circles around greys.
Reds’ ear tufts are significantly more prominent than those of greys; I contemplate why. (ditto those of lynxes v. bobcats)
In the UK, where Grey Squirrels were introduced in the 19th Century and Red Squirrels are native, this seems not to be the case.
As the Grey Squirrels have advanced across the country the Red Squirrels have retreated and are now absent from most of England and lowland Scotland. The Greys seem to out-compete them for food resources and also carry a disease, Squirrel pox, to which they have resistance but which is generally fatal for the Reds.
If they live there in the rafters, one can easily sympathize with the attempt to get some peace and quiet.
My thoughts exactly!
Clerical parsimony forces squirrels to subsist on old ropes. Shame on the C of E.
the squirrels would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those pesky kids.
“They are a real menace.”
Only the church could feel themselves menaced by squirrels.
—
In other Christmas news, it has emerged that the East German Government in 1979 wanted to wage what could reasonably be called a war on Christmas, but the Stasi (secret police) of all people, talked them out of it.
Christmas was to be turned into a Jahresabschlussfest — end of year festival. Ok… and a Christmas tree would have become a Jahresabschlussbaum. But an angel was to become a “Jahresendflügelpuppe” — literally “end of year winged puppet” (or doll, more strictly speaking, but puppet is also literally accurate.)
I must say I agree for once with the Stasi, and no doubt the church, on this. I don’t care who you are. You can’t call an angel an end of year winged puppet. Just, NO.
http://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/kleine-geschichtskunde-ddr-wollte-weihnachten-umbenennen/12760408.html
Secret policemen are not always stupid.
Doubtless the stasi figured they were unpopular enough already, without being ordered to enforce any more daftness.
cr
“Secret policemen are not always stupid.”
And they have great balls.
I saw this on Fox News! They were frothing about another attack on their precious holiday! Damned atheist squirrels running amok! Of course, Obama is to blame.
Squirrels can’t be atheists, since the don’t exist. Regardless of being honorary cats or not.
You see, squirrels don’t get a mention in the BuyBile.
Eny fule knoze that the answers to all questions are in the BiBile.
There still aren’t any squirrels in the BuyBoule.
Therefore squirrels don’t exist.
Corollary.
If squirrels are atheists (as established by Coyne et al, in a paper submitted 2015-12-24), and squirrels don’t exist (op.cit.), then no atheists exist.
I’m sure that the Discovery Institute will be impressed by my logic. My unarguable (their choice of words) logic.
Of course. They aren’t nuts!
Who are they to question God’s will? If God wanted those ropes intact and the bells rung, He would have intervened. Sad, though, when even God enlists in the War on Christmas. He’ll probably think twice about giving squirrels free will next time.
… and now we know the cause of the accident that led to Quasimodo’s hunchback at Notre Dame.
Why would squirrels chew through rope? What do they get out of it?
As others have suggested, maybe it’s payback time for all the noise.
Bringing the good gnaws for Xmas, of course.
The Gnawspels, the Good Gnaws for all Original Sinners.
At least, it’s the first time I’ve heard of these particular sins happening.
Or maybe the rope’s made of hemp.
If the rope has been handled, it often collects salt from sweat. Rodents love this, and chew on such ropes whenever possible.
Salt sources can be few and far between in some environments. Hikers in the Sierra Nevada have reported marmots (which can be quite acclimated to humans) watching and waiting for a hiker to finish peeing on some vegetation, then scarfing down the vegetation.
Well, vegetables always taste better with a bit of… seasoning on them. 😉
cr
So, would Brussel sprouts taste any better with Golden Showers™ seasoning? Couldn’t hurt.
Couldn’t possibly make any difference. Nothing in this universe tastes remotely as vile as Brussels Sprouts. Just the mention of them gives me the shudders. 🙁
cr
They must be sorely disappointed when a female hiker comes along.
Don’t female hikers pee too, then?
cr
I’m here to tell you they do, on the vegetation, more often than not. Mosses and short grasses, that sort of thing.
What you’ll never see them doing is marking their territory by doing a handstand to get the pee as high as possible on a tree. Well, maybe some would, if they took this as a dare.
When you have to squat, the barer the ground, the better…
I will only say bare granite or scree is trickier than moss.
Oh, and while an alpine meadow with lupins and paintbrush and anemones may be pretty and somewhat private, nearby flowers will need arrangement.
@ JohnnieCanuck
Yes, I was definitely thinking of a soil substrate. 😉
Though hopefully with some surrounding bushes… 😉
cr
With any luck at all!
Last year I was out birding in a NWR consisting of miles of earthen, gravel-road-topped dikes surrounding huge, more or less rectangular impoundments of Lake Erie, where the tallest things around were the bulrushes and Phragmites. After 3 or 4 hours I was getting a bit desperate and decided that the reeds down at the base of the dike I was on were tall & dense enough that if I could scramble down the bank I could duck behind them & relieve myself between the reeds & the water, effectively screened from the road. Then it dawned on me that there quite likely were birders on the dike on the opposite side of the impoundment…with spotting scopes.
Well, a couple of days ago I was walking up the beach a few miles north of here** when the need arose. And the ‘safest’ place was right in the middle of the beach, because I could see the nearest people – at least a mile away – just tiny dots on the beach, so therefore I was just a dot to them. I was mildly amused by the incongruity – ‘hidden in plain sight’ so to speak.
** Here being New Brighton, suburb of Christchurch.
cr
Same thing that they get out of chewing through cladding on phone lines. (As happened back in the BBS days a bit, thus ruining the lines when it rained.)
Or perhaps what they got out of gnawing through just the last bit of stems on my father’s tomato plants and wasting the tomato proper.
Maybe they do it for the same reason the scorpion stings the frog halfway across the river: the squirrels gnaw because it’s their nature.
I’ve usually thought of squirrels and ferrets as being stretch rats.
Cats are deities, going by their self esteem , so they can’t be atheists.
As far as I can remember only humans have free will. All other of god’s creatures can only do His will. Seems to me that god likes to sleep in on Xmas morning as much as the next guy. He just gets the squirrels to help out.
“The bells have been ringing out for hundreds of years, it would be a shame if we weren’t able to ring them any more.”
Yes, what a tragedy that we no longer have the rope technology required to repair this incredibly technical problem.
Yep, a few squirrels and the whole thing comes unraveled.
The squirrels were probably framed by chipmunks who are sitting around in their chipmunk hole, rubbing their hands together and in their squeaky voices saying, “Good. Good.”
Cars are not atheists.
Cats are egotheists.
Most cars today blindly follow the directions of their drivers, rather like theists wrt priests. Only when their drivers instruct them to defy the laws of physics, could you say they sometimes disobey.
This is changing and it won’t be long now until cars take their wheels in their own actuators and begin to make up their own minds on the details of getting to point B. I still wouldn’t consider them atheists then, not until they start going feral.
“The bells have been ringing out for hundreds of years, it would be a shame if we weren’t able to ring them any more.”
The reaction seems a bit apocalyptic – surely it is not a financially insuperable challenge to fund replacement ropes? If the Squirrels had destroyed the Church roof it might seem justified to treat this as a disaster (from the point of view of the Church at any rate) but they do seem to be rather over-reacting to the damage to the ropes!
I’m sure the parishioners will get roped into financing the repairs.
In Swedish, the Order (Rodentia) is called Gnagare (gah naah gaah ruh) Wonderfully descriptive!
In French they are ‘rongeurs’ which – if lacking the onomatopoeic qualities of the swedish word – does also refer to their gnawing habit (Ronger = to gnaw).
The pine squirrels in my neighborhood (NW Montana) have consistently and persistently chewed up the Tibetan prayer flags strung between the lodgepile . . . I have watched one who is absolutely frantic in her efforts to shred the flags, one at a time.
uh, “lodgepole” (pines, that is)