Squirtle

I think "Squirtle" wins the opportunity to be my first in a series of in depth portraiture of the dirty hippies inhabiting the memorial oak grove.

Bradley "Squirtle" Costello was born on a warm summer night in 1987, somewhere on Long Island. His father, a patent lawyer, pulled himself out of poverty by working six jobs throughout community college and night law school, which makes him especially disgusted by his overpriveledged son's environmental fantasies. He finally kicked his "pansy assed delusional freak of a son" out of the house after Bradley cut the power lines to his family home in an effort to demonstrate the benefit of his homemade solar panels - which did not in any way work. It was then that he read an article about the people living in trees at Cal for the past few months, and, due to his dislike of the athletes and popular kids who used to make fun of him in high school, immediately recognized the value of their protest. Bradley's mother, a French pre school teacher, funded his trip, as she secretly resented her husband's lack of social concern. Virginie, as she was called, was the reason that Squirtle's socialist values and tolerance of underarm hair on women was fostered in him from a young age.

After landing at Oakland International Airport with only the items in his backpackers... backpack and his Nalgene bottle, he took a cab ("One last splurge since I don't know where I am, I'll put it on my dad's credit card which Maman secretly gave me for emergencies") and asked the driver to drop him off on the infamous Telegraph Avenue. His half a semester of community college on Long Island, and the subsequent "hippies" he met in his EnviSci 101 class, had not prepared him for the authenticity of Berkeley. "Man," Bradley thought to himself, "this place is real." In an instant, "Bradley" was gone, replaced by Squirtle. After all, he had always had a difficult time deciding between the tree hopping squirrel and the methodical and under appreciated turtle as his inner power animal. Why not just pick two?

It didn't take long for someone to point the way to the oak grove. At this point, there was no border fence around the grove, and only minimal ground support. Now, there is a strict hierarchy even amongst egalitarian environmentalists, and even Squirtle, with his limited protest experience, was aware that he would have to spend some time on the ground getting to know the supporters and assuring them that he wasn't a pig infiltrating their expression of their freedom of speech. Fortunately, the rest of the sitters and supporters quickly realized the value of Squirtle's presence after he casually mentioned the $3000 in cash his mother had also given him for emergencies. With this "donation" that Squirtle "voluntarily" made to the cause, they were able to publish two fliers distributed by loyal supporters and fund six months worth of Kashi and Farmer's Market purchased organic fruit to the current sitters.

After two months, the sitters extended the invitation that Squirtle, nee Bradley, to join them amongst the limbs of the trees that he so passionately defended, and in a heartbeat, he felt the validation that he had been looking for for several years. "Yes," he told them, "yes, I will help you defeat the tyranny of the UC Regents, who simply want to help their Pac 10 football team compete on the same level as the rest of their division by providing them with state of the art training opportunities, opportunities that would be extended to other University of California scholar athletes. Yes, I believe that me climbing into this tree for the next 2-3 years will provide the necessary catalyst to environmental sustainability that said regents have been unable to embrace, even though they have promised to plant 3 trees for every 1 that they cut down. And yes, even though I've never lived in California before and I am not a student at Cal, and I really just hate football and people who like football, and even though there would be better ways to raise awareness about the environment not involving a grove the size of a postage stamp in the middle of a city, I will take up this noble cause. Yes, yes I will stockpile my urine and feces to defend myself against the innocent paid arborists paid by the UC to cut our supply lines. Yes, yes, yes. But once they cut those supply lines, I will be coming down when I run out of cigarettes. There are some conditions that just no one should have to live with."

Good luck in the next chapter of the struggle, Brad. I mean Squirtle.


In snake news, Discovery has a new show on called I Was Bitten that chronicles people who have been bitten from first person accounts. The first episode had a guy bitten by a rattlesnake that he wanted to KEEP FOR A PET. Again, never trust your neighbors.