4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, April 12, 2005 OPINION S£ p& JASON Z. PESICK Editor in Chief SUHAEL MOMIN SAM SINGER Editorial Page Editors ALISON GO Managing Editor EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com NOTABLE QUOTABLE 44'What they did to get ready to take that man down was extraordinary." - Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, (D- Nev.), commenting on an incident at the Cap- itol Building yesterday where police tackled a suspicious man holding two suitcases, as reported yesterday by The Associated Press. religion f' y RZ }ice. k, F. %' ALEXANDER HONKALA LMMINC [hRADE 01 Squirrel huggers SAM SINGER SAM'S ..B here's a reason I shy away from the squirrels in the Diag. It's not their unusual size, though even a sharp- eyed expert would have trouble distinguishing the Ann Arbor garden vari- ety from a slimmed-down mountain lion. It's not their daring grit either - I watched one stare down an oncoming Chevy Tahoe, poised on hind legs, undaunted 'til the tragic end. They're bold little critters, but that's not what gets me. To better understand, imagine, for just a moment, returning from winter break to learn your bedroom held host to what may have been the rowdiest rodent rock party of the century - two weeks of sunflower seed bingeing, honey-roasted peanut feasts and God knows what sorts of squirrel-on-squirrel debauch- ery. The room was ravaged. Hidden under a blan- ket of empty shells, the carpet and the once-orderly food corner were barely recognizable. Other traces of foul play - from my comforter to my keyboard - spread far and wide. Squirrel pellets, the last ves- tiges of the lavish banquet, had been peppered about the room. How they got in was unclear. The room, equipped with four walls and a ceiling, had always appeared closed off to the outside world. What mattered was that they wouldn't be coming back. No squirrel in the right mind, I was told, would chance a break-in with the space re-occupied. It made sense. We were, after all, 30 times their size. But as luck would have it, no more than a week of tranquility passed before the intruders recovered their nerves. It started with petty theft. A pretzel stick here, some Cheez-Its there, nothing we couldn't make light of. But the food raids were quick to intensify. Our food supply was thinning, and the more mea- sures we took to protect it, the more ambitious the little demons became. They gutted Ziplock bags and gnawed through cardboard boxes. Their motor skills, which I'd bet the bank would exceed those of the average kindergartner, were simply stunning. No container was too strong to puncture, no packaging too thick to penetrate. Their appetite seemed to grow by the day, but as I learned while shuffling bleary- eyed through my underwear drawer at eight one morning, they weren't eating everything they stole. A neat mound of pistachio nuts next to my favorite pair of boxers. A carefully hidden stash of miniature cookies below my undershirts. A week-old, half- eaten grilled cheese sandwich lodged between my sweaters. My dresser, which apparently resembled the hollow of a tree, had become a personal pantry for our stash-happy guests. That did it for me. Pest control came with traps of all shapes and sizes. Industrial-strength storage bins were rolled in to fortify the food supply, and the room was rigged with metal cages and rectangular sheets of super glue. It may have looked like a war zone, but it was squirrel-proof, and we slept easy. Cut off, the invaders grew sloppier and more aggressive by the day. Worse, our presence in the room was no longer enough to keep them out. As you can guess, this brought about some close encounters (including an early-morning incident on my roommate's bed that left him possibly warped for life, but certainly forever terrified of anything with fur). After a few more traumatizing run-ins, we finally found the entry point. What had begun with an open bag of sunflower seeds ended with a two-by-four piece of plywood. It all got me wondering: What drove these guys indoors in the first place, and why, in the face of unmistakable danger, did they insist on coming back? So I sucked it up and did some homework. It wasn't the most interesting research, but I think I found some answers. Did you know squirrels don't hibernate? It's the truth. Much like us, they spend their winters rela- tively inactive, though never completely dormant. Activity during cold months is usually limited to the gathering of previously stored nuts and seeds. It's the harsh winters that make the foraging and hoarding periods, which typically take place in mid-to-late fall, so critical. A successful forag- ing season will strongly correlate with a squirrel's capacity to accumulate body fat during the winter. It's a survival strategy, and in an urban ecosystem like Ann Arbor's where provisions are scarce, it's one that requires total optimization. Enter the Squirrel Club. Founded in 2002, the organization boasts a membership of more than 350. It convenes weekly (in groups of about 50) during warm months and less often over the win- ter, to feed on-campus squirrel populations. I know what you're thinking, and you're right: the act of feeding a squirrel, in-and-of itself, is harmless. The problem comes, however, when the process is streamlined - in this case, when fifty kids walk around campus every week showering squirrels with food supplements. Though undoubt- edly well intentioned, club gatherings may have profound impacts on the behavioral patterns of our local squirrels, each of which run the risk of devel- oping a dangerous reliance on student generosity. A squirrel even marginally dependent on weekly donations will inevitably devote less energy to forag- ing and hoarding. Those lucky enough to avoid the appetite cushion will be that much better acclimated to the realities of resource scarcity, and in turn, that much more efficient come time to forage. It is a squirrel's ability to recover food in the winter, not its feeding patterns in the spring and fall, that will ultimately determine its prospect of survival. In this light, the Michigan Squirrel Club may be doing for campus squirrels what decades of ineffi- cient and mismanaged welfare payouts have done for our nation's poor: dampening incentives and con- fining recipients to destitution. Ann Arbor squirrels don't need a safety net, they need a reality check. If anything, complacency with an artificial, but by no means reliable feeding regimen will keep recipients foraging into the dead of winter where they are left to scour for by-and-large nonexistent provisions. Perhaps this could explain why instead of lying cozy in his nest, our little friend was sifting through my bag of Snyder's Pretzels. To members of the Squirrel Club, let me say this: Yes, convening to feed is a kind-hearted gesture. Yes, it's probably a nice social outlet as well. And yes, everyone loves a novelty T-shirt. But please, next time you're out there, think of the squirrels. Singer can be reached at singers@umich.edu. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Undergraduate education has independent value TO THE DAILY: Mr. Zbrozek makes several disturbing and insult- ing claims in his column (We don't need no (more) education, 04/11/2005) the most glaring and absurd of which is the idea that the purpose of higher educa- tion is to contribute to the economy. The assumption that undergraduates do not contribute to the econ- omy for four years is patently false, but beside the point. The idea that English and philosophy majors choose their fields in order to free up time for beer pong is simply offensive. Both misstatements are embedded in this larger falsehood regarding the purpose of education. I am shocked that a person who clearly dedicates a portion of his time to writ- ing and analyzing the world around him would be so dismissive of education in the humanities as to imply that learning isn't worth it unless there is a guaranteed payoff. People with strong backgrounds in the humanities do in fact get jobs after college, but this is again beside the point. Perhaps Zbrozek's friends are sitting around drunk, lampooning their history classes for being too easy. The rest of us are busy taking our aca- demic careers more seriously. Mary Fitzpatrick LSA sophomore Letter writer recieves donation in her name TO THE DAILY: I was glad to see, on Friday's Editorial page, that the Daily's own writers are being put to shame by the general student population. Directly under Jeff Cravens's column (Time to act, 04/08/2005), which pondered compassionate education without comple- mentary action as invalid, appeared a bold letter from an outraged student who demands that some- thing must be done about Ann Arbor's homeless population (Students should refrain from paying city's seen," she instead turns back towards home, aban- doning her trip to Starbucks for a hot chocolate to take up her pen and put out the clarion call, "Get your act together, Ann Arbor." How wonderful to see that Cravens's words urg- ing personal action are unnecessary, that our student population is already walking the walk, renounc- ing their bourgeois pursuits of hot chocolate in favor of taking bold, concrete steps to improve the mean streets of Ann Arbor. While this supposedly progressive liberal town is "letting the homeless rot away on the streets," at least one student is standing up and saying, "No more!" In recognition of this student's bold and self- less action to help the homeless in the face of Ann Arbor's callous disregard of the problem, a neglect epitomized by the two-year-old Delonis Center's on- site job training resources, substance abuse recovery programs and community kitchen, I have made a small donation to the Shelter Association of Washt- enaw County ip this student's name. I hope this act will shame the organization and the larger commu- nity, which devotes a pathetic 40 paid employees and 19,000 volunteer hours to the shelter each year, into finally stepping up and acknowledging the problem of the homeless community. It is with only a small twinge of regret for the week's worth of Starbucks hot chocolates that I must note that I have made my online donation at www. annarborshelter.org, and I hope that my regret will be replaced with pride as I reflect further on the way in which I was inspired by one student's bold, personal sacrifice of letter writing. Richard Murphy Rackham Israelis, Like Palestinians, want peace for the region To THE DAILY: Recent viewpoints concerning the Israeli-Pal- estinian conflict have grossly misrepresented the truth. I am an Israeli citizen who has been a part of this conflict my entire life. Furthermore, I served in the Israeli military and witnessed the exact things at checkpoints" comment or the justifying of sui- cide bombings in Shimaa Abdelfadeel's viewpoint, (The real roadblock, 04/11/2005), show the distinc- tion between the debaIte on campus and reality. In the future, I ask that people submitting let- ters to the Daily refrain from stating lies in their articles. Shimaa Abdelfadeel, it is not the case that Palestinians have had "27 years of nonviolent resistance constantly being met by violence from the Israeli military" as you stated in your article. The first intifada, lasting from 1987-93, was a very violent uprising. But, Shuster also gives misinfor- mation when he claims that the majority of Israe- lis "recognize the necessity of the occupation" in his article. The only thing the majority of Israelis agree on is the necessity for peace, an issue that is terribly lacking in the ongoing debates on campus. Since the day I was born I was taught at home, school and the military the love of peace. The Israe- li Defense Forces instilled in me morals for human life that are lacking in many societies today. The majority of the Israeli people would like to see a thriving Palestinian state next to them. Israelis do not want to look over their shoulder on the way to school or serve three years of our lives in the military. People on this campus should recognize the fact that the majority of Israelis, much like the majority of Palestinians, want to live their simple lives in peace and prosperity. Or Shotan The letter writer is a LSA freshman and Chair of the Israeli Students Organization. Daily headline suggests a bias against the Greeks To THE DAILY: Every time there are reported problems with the Greek system, there is a front page article in the Daily. Knowing the Daily's disdain for the Greek system, this comes as no surprise. Rather than men- tioning the positive social and philanthropic contri- butions to the campus and society, the Daily seems intent on ruining the reputation of the Greeks at the 01 0 I c th riir elcn am r #z _