Squirrel Wednesday: Sexxy Squirrel Skills

So in this space I’ve told you how squirrels can fly, purr, and maybe even live forever. Today I learned of another special squirrel ability—apparently, like many animals, squirrels can and do masturbate, but they can also (now don’t get jealous, guys, because I know most of you have tried it) self-fellate:

“An oral masturbation was recorded when a male sat with head lowered and an erect penis in his mouth, being stimulated with both mouth (fellatio) and forepaws (masturbation), while the lower torso moved forward and backwards in thrusting motions, finally culminating in an apparent ejaculation, after which the male appeared to consume the ejaculate.”

So…yeah. Apparently, according to this article, Cape ground squirrels do this both to ward off sexually transmitted diseases and to conserve water (hey, they live in the desert! no need to waste precious body moisture on, er, bathing).

 

A Little-Known Fact About Squirrels

Squirrels, viewed by many as destructive pests (they’re just trying to get by!), have many amazing talents. One of the more obscure is that they can purr just like cats. Via The Awl, here’s proof that they can get their little happy motors running with the best of ’em. I’d hoped to embed the video here, but I can’t figure out MSNBC’s code, so please follow the link. It’s adorable.

 

Save the Squirrels

I meant to post this as a Squirrel Wednesday, but got sidetracked until this morning. As many readers undoubtedly know, the offices of the Discovery Channel were stormed by an “ecoterrorist” yesterday (who did not hurt any of his hostages and has since been taken into custody). He presented the station staff with a list of demands, which, if you can stomach a whole buffet of crazy (with some good points for garnish), you can read here. I skimmed it, and toward the end this caught my eye:

Saving the environment and the remaning species diversity of the planet is now your mindset. Nothing is more important than saving them. The Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels.

OF COURSE, the squirrels!

Update: I’m sorry to say that I was wrong—the eco-warrior was shot and killed by authorities, not taken into custody. He was carrying explosives, so I guess they had to do what they had to do, but still. Sad.

 

Back, for now…

So maybe it will be Squirrel Friday? Or just Friday the 13th. It’s been an eventful year so far, though the demon Facebook has siphoned my sharing away, with pithy thrice-weekly updates on weirdness and fun. The past several weeks have seen what I thought were the beginnings of something new and good, but turned out to be an unrequited situation. (I feel I can share it now because almost nobody who knows me will check this space anymore.) It’s a painful situation, though I think it will pass fairly soon; the party in question delivered the blow as kindly and honorably as possible, and sad feelings pass a lot sooner than hard feelings, of which there really are none, even in my habitually pessimistic view. Strangely, and oddly comfortingly, as I was receiving the speech while sitting on a park bench, a fat, fluffy squirrel inched over and sniffed cautiously at my bare toe, staring up at us as I was trying to hold my feelings together. He knew it’s a hard world out there for squirrels.

 

The Oughts

Over the past ten years I have (in no particular order):

• Set foot in nine different countries.
• Gotten a divorce.
• Had my heart stomped on two other times.
• Acquired a useless master’s degree.
• Bought, restored, and sold a house.
• Raised chickens.
• Started and sold a business.
• Coped with the deaths of several friends.
• Attempted one unhappy career change.
• Written one very bad novel.
• Moved to New York.
• Had seven different addresses.
• Run three half-marathons.
• Edited many, many books.
• Tried, haltingly, to learn to play an instrument.
• Made more new friends than I thought I was capable of.
• Seen many, many amazing concerts.
• Become a much better cook.
• Been robbed.

And lots of other stuff. On the main, it’s been a decade of a lot of growth, but also a lot of turbulence. I’m ready for things to stabilize a bit over the next ten years.

 

Done.

I can’t figure out how to get this little guy into my sidebar since I can’t link to it—why do you make simple things difficult, WordPress?—but here is my official winner’s badge from NaNoWriMo. I clocked in at 50,323, thank you very much. And into the vault it goes. No, I will not share it; it’s really bad, sort of like getting trapped in a long, boring conversation at a party. But now I know I can do it, even with a busy work, freelance, and, despite my complaints, social life. I will muse on ideas throughout the upcoming year and maybe take another stab at it next year if I come up with a concept that actually interests me.

 

The Home Stretch

Well, I’ve almost done it…as of this writing my unreadable novella has reached 43,100 words. This means that I need to get another 6,900 words written by midnight on Monday. I’m aiming to hit 45,000 before going to bed, which is ambitious, seeing as it’s nearly 10:00 now. But I’ll say one thing—at the beginning of the month, the thought of cranking out nearly 7,000 words in two days would have seemed impossible. Now, anything less than 10,000 words seems, if not exactly a breeze, at least reasonably doable. And I’ll be so, so glad to get back to a normal social life. Why do I do these things to myself?

UPDATE: Woo, just hit 48K, and the night is young. If I’m very, very good, I may actually finish tonight! Stay tuned…

 

Halfway through the Month

Today is the halfway point to my NaNoWriMo deadline of November 30. Unfortunately, I’m still behind in my target word count—today should be 25,000 words. Still, though, I got a little jolt of happy to see my total creep past the 20,000-word mark. At 1.5 spacing, that’s nearly 60 pages of not very good prose! Way more than I’ve ever committed to a single document, fiction or otherwise. So I’m going to give myself a little pat for that and try to get up to at least 22,000 by bedtime tonight. I’m also hoping to finish this gigantic editing project I’ve been laboring on for the past several weeks. Only 1 1/2 chapters to go on that, which I should be able to knock out by the end of today. Once that’s off my plate I can really pick up the pace with my writing.

 

Still in the Hole

But I’m making progress. I’m very, very close to 14,000 words, having managed about 2,000 words this evening. A few more sessions like this ought to bring be up to speed by the end of the week, and I hope to create a little surplus this weekend so that next week will go a little smoother. I’m starting to have anxiety dreams about making my word quota.

 

Already in the Hole

Argh. I was off to a very strong start, even ahead of my daily targets at first, but then life got in the way (in the form of continuing freelance work and a parental visit that consumed precious evening hours), and as a consequence I’m now about 2,000 words behind where I should be for today. I’m going to try my damnedest to reach 10,000 before I go to bed tonight, which will mean I only (only!) need to write a little over 3,000 words tomorrow. Ugh! I’m also getting a little tired of my storyline, so I need to shift gears a bit. How, I don’t know, but I’m hoping something will just sort of flow from my fingers tomorrow.

As Bethie points out in the comments in the post below, this whole quantity over quality thing is proving very, very difficult for me. I am, have always been, a compulsive self-editor. I simply can’t keep writing if I know there’s a glaring error on the page, or if I know I just used the same adjective or phrase within the past few paragraphs. It makes me crazy. I scroll back up constantly to fix tiny things, which is stupid, since nobody will ever read this “book” anyway. It’s simply not sustainable.

I think I need to fix myself a drink. Maybe a black Russian will loosen my uptight little paws and allow me to let the words fall as they may.

UPDATE: Yes! Alcohol does work! One small cocktail, and 1,100 words flew onto the virtual page. Fitzgerald and Hemingway were really on to something. Now, all I need is a whole bunch of amphetamines, a la Kerouac, and I’ll be a literary superstar in no time.