Source.

Previously:
The story behind ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’

The Air Force claims their quest to build an automated ground squirrel tracking device is only meant to protect the endangered critters, not destroy them and their fellow insurgents of the Squirrel Liberation Front. Right. Just like Area 51 is just another military base, and JFK wasn’t killed by a tiger.

Previously:
Squirrel Uprising in Vermont: ‘This was an attack’
Squirrel Uprising: The hunters become the hunted
Squirrel Uprising: Spies among us!
Squirrel Uprising: Rise of the black ‘super squirrel’

“This wasn’t an accident, this was an attack,” said Kevin McDonald of Bennington.

McDonald describes it as something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie, except instead of birds…

“It kind of startled me and I whirled around to look and saw this furry thing on my back and it was a gray squirrel,” McDonald said.

While McDonald cleared snow from his front yard a gray squirrel jumped onto his back three separate times.

“It jumped at me again and got on my upper arm and started to claw and scratch and I threw it off again and it jumped at me again,” he said with a laugh.

No word yet on whether Ben & Jerry’s will name a new flavor of ice cream after the squirrel, but “Rabid Rodent Rum Raisin” does have a nice ring to it.

Previously:
Squirrel Uprising: The hunters become the hunted
Squirrel Uprising: Spies among us!
Squirrel Uprising: The latest updates

No, not that kind of space.

The space between sentences. Or is it the two spaces between sentences?

Slate wants everyone to know once and for all that typing two spaces after a period is “totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong.”

Got it?

Every modern typographer agrees on the one-space rule. It’s one of the canonical rules of the profession, in the same way that waiters know that the salad fork goes to the left of the dinner fork and fashion designers know to put men’s shirt buttons on the right and women’s on the left. Every major style guide—including the Modern Language Association Style Manual and the Chicago Manual of Style—prescribes a single space after a period. (The Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association, used widely in the social sciences, allows for two spaces in draft manuscripts but recommends one space in published work.) Most ordinary people would know the one-space rule, too, if it weren’t for a quirk of history. In the middle of the last century, a now-outmoded technology—the manual typewriter—invaded the American workplace. To accommodate that machine’s shortcomings, everyone began to type wrong. And even though we no longer use typewriters, we all still type like we do.

I guess I should confess that until recently I was guilty of putting two spaces between sentences. Please don’t turn me in to the grammar police.

In my defense, though, that’s how I was taught. Our high school English teachers drilled it into us, as did my keyboarding teacher in 10th grade. (Do they even teach keyboarding anymore?) I two-spaced my way through five years of college with never a mention about my scandalous grammatical heresy. As far as I knew, that was the official doctrine, the correct way to formally construct one’s paragraphs.

Oh sure, websites use only a single space between sentences, but I just figured that was the inherent nature of HTML. Besides, proper grammar has never been a high priority on the World Wide Web. Come to find out, the vast series of tubes known as the Internet knew better than the fine educators of Arlington ISD.

But I’ve since seen the light. I’ve recognized the error of my ways. Of course my thumb occasionally taps an extra space out of sheer habit, but such slips are rare, I promise. I’ve learned my lesson and have come to fully embrace the single-space theology. I shall go and double-space no more.

Previously:
So technology is to blame for starting sentences with ‘so’

I follow Wayne into an ancient oak bottom, the canopy ten stories above us, only a dim light filtering in. The understory is mostly open, but there are scattered stands of cane, holly, huckleberry, and pine. The birds are just waking up, Carolina wrens, a few warblers or vireos I can’t identify, and a cardinal. We stand listening and looking, and after ten minutes Wayne spots a squirrel high in a tree, cutting acorns. We spend another ten minutes stalking it, feeling the ground with our feet, taking care not to crack twigs, keeping our eyes on the treetops. When the squirrel moves, we move; when it stops, we stop—always careful to keep a screen of leaves between us and the animal. Wayne aims and fires, and the squirrel drops onto the forest floor. At that same moment I hear rustling overhead and see another gray squirrel running between the crowns of the oaks. I lead it and fire twice. It too drops to the ground. Wayne puts both animals in his vest.

Consider yourselves warned, varmints. Don’t mess with Texas.

Previously:
Squirrel Uprising: Spies among us!
All hail the solar-powered squirrel god
Squirrel Uprising: The latest updates

Source.

Source.

Previously:
This week on Lost

Sheer. Genius.

Source.

Previously:
All hail the solar-powered squirrel god
Squirrel Uprising: The latest updates
Squirrel Uprising: Rise of the black ‘super squirrel’