Crows vs. Squirrels - Forrest Taylor

Instructor Jake McNinch is a man of many stories, but since the first day’s introductions and  Satorities, he has been teasing a story about squirrels and crows. The Satori Harold sat down with McNinch to get the inside scoop behind this story.

In 2002, McNinch was a Freshman at the University of Washington. During the fall semester, he took daily early morning runs. Coming back from one of these runs, he passed a domed trash can. Suddenly, a squirrel jumped out of the hatch of the can, only to land in the direct path of Jake’s foot. “It happened too fast for me to stop it,” he said, “so I kicked it about six feet. Of course, I apologized, tried to ask if it was okay, but it just gave me the squirrel eye. Do you know what that is?” He stops the story to turn his head, twitch his nose in the air, and fix me with a piercing glare. He wiggled his eyebrows fearsomely. “And then he charged. I ran as fast as I could the other way, and circled back to my dorm room the long way. I’m pretty sure I only got away because of, you know, longer legs.”

It was at this point in his story that McNinch took a large swig of his coffee. “It was about a week later,” he said, “when I was walking along this small shortcut through the university’s garden area. I was hurrying because I was a little late for class, when out of the bushes popped the same squirrel. But this time? He was wielding a knife.” I asked him to clarify. “Well, he had this little broken-off piece of a Pepsi can, which he was using as a knife. And, you know, I have no doubt he could mess me up. I turned around and tried to escape, but two of his buddies had snuck up behind me, like clever raptor-evolved squirrels from Jurassic Park. I was trapped, fearing for my life, when I heard a loud ‘CAW!’ And out of the sky this huge, black crow soars down and goes after the knife squirrel. And that’s when I turned and ran as I have never run before.”

Matt Buchholtz, a counselor who was sitting nearby, added, “I’ve had that sort of thing happen to me as well. I was painting in the Quad, and this sneaky-looking squirrel started shaking needles at me from the tree above. I was just about to have to pack up and move, when a crow knocked it right out of the tree and on to the ground.”

“Exactly,” said McNinch. “This sort of thing is what has convinced me that there are two groups of warring animals at the University of Washington - the crows and the squirrels. And as you can see,” he said as he turned his laptop around to show an enormous wallpaper of a crow’s face, “I’m always crankin’ up my crow cred.”