Thursday, July 19, 2012

Squirrelocalypse

Isn't that just an awesome title for a blog post? With something so badass, how can this entire entry not be 98% hyper-concentrated coolness?

So, this blog post is about squirrels. Hell fucking yeah! To kick it off, I'm quickly gonna grab some squirrel images off google and -- oh, wait, I won't, because I already live in fucking Squirreltopia.






From top to bottom: squirrel, squirrel, sentry squirrel, squirrel and leg, another fucking squirrel, Squirrels 2: Electric Boogaloo

I think I hinted at this in a previous blog post*, but I basically exist in the realm of permanent squirrels. Every time some halfwit Ned Stark wannabe puts a lacklustre "Winter is coming" remix on the Internet, a squirrel pops into existence somewhere in my neighbourhood. And that's a lot of fucking squirrels.

 
Made for a friend. Don't even ask.

Okay, well, I'm not absolutely drowning in squirrel the moment I set foot outside my front door (though oh god that would be awesome). Still, there's an occasional rascal scuttling about the area -- and for a guaranteed Squirrel Central experience during even the most frigid Sunday afternoon, I can stroll on down to Government Avenue.



Wedged pretty much in the middle of Cape Town, this road is a very long and very straight walkway through the Company's Garden -- basically the biggest and prettiest park in the area (and there are loads of those buggers scattered around my neighbourhood). It's a really great place to go through if you're running or on your way to town, leading to a startling diversity of distractions: an art gallery, some war memorials, flower gardens and even a holocaust museum.

Here's just a couple of pictures:







... OMIGOD PIGEON!

It would take a much longer blog post and approximately 63 cellphone pictures to do justice to all of the cool stuff in this area, but I'm pretty sure that I'll never find a word count adequate to describe the sheer squeelicious joy of the local squirrel population. Whenever I've skipped on through this place, it hasn't been unusual to find at least half a dozen squirrels doing awesome squirrelly stuff on or next to the avenue. Everything about the existence of these creatures suggests that a mouse and a cat got it on once and the offspring just kept the most mind-meltingly killer traits from both parents because fuck yeah genetics. Squirrels are awesome, man.

Oh, wish you could touch one? Don't just wish, believe.

The glare is being emitted from a choir of radiant angels singing just off-camera.

This isn't a lucky or painstaking shot. When you head along Government Avenue, squirrels don't scamper out of your way, they scamper towards you -- and a swarm of three or four fluffy little pumpkins all eagerly hopping out of the undergrowth and bounding over to you is more than enough to overload your cute glands and send you into complete brainheart meltdown of candy canes and love.


Of course, they're just being greedy little shits -- as soon as the pictured squirrel realised that I *didn't* have any food in my hand, it promptly lost interest and fucked right off again. But man, these poof-tailed fellas are adorable as hell anyway, so I forgive them. It beats the total snubbing I get from some of the local cats, anyway.

... which, in turn, STILL beats the luck that I have with some women.

Anyway, that's a heavily abridged and extraordinarily rodent-focused view of the Company's Garden in Cape Town. I originally meant to go on a full town expedition and write about all that (took the photos and everything), but I realised that would be waaay too much content for a decent bite-sized blog post thing and the squirrels really deserved as much attention as humanly possible. So I'll write more about Cape Town central in posts to come. Or forget about the idea entirely. We'll see.

At least I remembered the squirrels.

*... as opposed to a future one, duh.