← Previous Post: | Next Post:

 

Who is Killing the Great Squirrels of Missoula?

For years, [Charlie] Leitch has made it his morning duty to leave piles of unsalted Hoody’s peanuts at the bottom of the trees outside Corbin Hall [at the University of Montana] to feed the 12 to 16 squirrels that inhabit them. But starting last week, most of the peanuts have gone uneaten.

On Thursday morning, he only saw about four squirrels, but they weren’t regulars. They acted like they barely knew him.

“Normally I show up in the morning and, literally, there will be eight squirrels at my feet wanting peanuts,” Leitch said. “They started disappearing about the time school started, and … I showed up on Tuesday and I put out peanuts and they just didn’t come.”

Leitch has worked on campus for nearly 23 years and, while his job as an accountant for the Rural Institute has made him adept at keeping track of hundreds of thousands of dollars of grant money and following paper trails, he is at a loss to find the majority of his long-tailed charges.

“I don’t know [what happened to the squirrels], but it’s got me worried to see that many disappear, because normally at this time … not only would they be swarming on that side of the building, they would be swarming on this side of the building, too, and there aren’t any,” he said. …

Margaret Soltan, September 22, 2009 4:35AM
Posted in: kind of a little weird

Trackback URL for this post:
https://www.margaretsoltan.com/wp-trackback.php?p=17710

4 Responses to “Who is Killing the Great Squirrels of Missoula?”

  1. David Says:

    He lost me here.

    “I really don’t want to hear anyone give me a purist argument that they’re not native to Montana,” he said. “Well I’m sorry, they’re here and specie-ism is just as bad as racism, or ageism or sexism … someone needs to take care of them.”

    I don’t like the way squirrels move. They skitter.
    I think I’m a squirrelist.

  2. theprofessor Says:

    A slow news day in Missoula apparently.

    One wonders whether Charlie has pondered how the approximately 10 jillion gazillion other squirrels survive without daily peanut deliveries.

  3. Margaret Soltan Says:

    Their Gross National Happiness is lower, tp.

  4. University Diaries » Squirrels and the American University Says:

    […] tired of squirrels chewing through their electrical systems sometimes secretly try to kill them. Or not […]

Comment on this Entry

UD REVIEWED

Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times

George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil

It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo

There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub

You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann

Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog

University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog

[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal

Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education

[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University

Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University

The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog

Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway

From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law

University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association

The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog

I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes

As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls

Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical

University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life

[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada

If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte

Archives

Categories