It all began last Thursday at approximately seven o’clock in the morning, while I was walking my gerbil, Darla, across campus, as is routine. I was jerked out of my state of contentment when Darla began pulling furiously on her leash. Looking about I immediately identified the cause of the commotion to be three of Macalester’s finest students: Jeffrey Rogers ’07, Daniel Schroeder ’07, and Amy Hutchinson ’08. Just ahead of me, near the chapel, the three of them, fully attired in wet suits and flippers, had come sprinting from behind a row of bushes only to dive at a spot in the ground from which a black squirrel had only just fled. Sitting up, Hutchinson watched the squirrel disappear, yelling “Fiddlesticks! We’ve missed again!” Ah yes, I’d almost forgotten it was Squirrel Chasing season. How foolish of me.

Having viewed this scene from afar I had the sense to let tempers cool before approaching. When I finally did confront the team with my questions as they sulked on Old Main’s front steps, they were apparently not in any mood to talk about their recent attempt. After a bit of prodding I eventually coaxed a few answers out of the members of Macalester’s varsity Squirrel Chasing team, among them an inquiry about the team’s uniforms. They explained to me that wet suits they wore provided an incredible advantage over the squirrels in allowing the team members to more easily “slither like oily seals,” while in pursuit. Admittedly, the complementary flippers occasionally slow down the Chasers while on the job, and have more than once caused painful tumbles, often resulting in a sprained ankle and sore toes, but their effectiveness in stunning a squirrel makes them worth their hazardous nature. Then why not goggles to complete the entourage? “Are you kidding? Goggles would make us look ridiculous,” scoffed Rogers.

Satisfied with this logic, I changed the topic, asking about the level of success the team was experiencing on the season. When they unanimously agreed that the season had thus far been a good one, I wondered what defined a good season in the art of squirrel chasing, how many squirrels had been bagged this year? In what turned into a lengthy reply to a fairly simple question, the team agreed that they had not “…officially, actually caught a squirrel.” In defense of the team, they did give a rather believable account of a case in which Rogers had gotten his teeth around a tail, but was not able to maintain the grasp after the squirrel’s violent rebuttal. Schroeder then responded to my confused expression by explaining that usually the team hunted with their hands rather than their mouths, but that “J.Ro is a little different than the rest of the team.”

As of now the team has acknowledged the lack of interest in the sport on campus, but they’re confident that they have a solution for this setback in the future of Macalester Squirrel Chasing. With a quick sketch in the dirt, Hutchinson showed me a version of the recruiting poster the team had thought up. It was picture of the team in competition performing what they refer to as the ‘Red Rover Maneuver’ which consists of all three members linked at the hands while charging a horror-stricken squirrel. Hutchinson went on to describe that the heading of the poster will read “Want to hold our hands and chase squirrels?” Schroeder added that there is also a Squirrel Chasing JV. That’s a little misleading considering that the JV consists only of First Year, Drew Bahrenburg ’08. Reportedly, Bahrenburg is anxious for a few teammates.