Squirrels

So what's the deal with the squirrels? Well, they're everywhere on campus. And they'll just about climb up your leg to eat that bagel you're holding. Really. These are some confident squirrels. So years ago, before any of us now living in Hoover House lived here, someone decided to make some t-shirts celebrating the aggressiveness of these squirrels. We still sell them, alongside the "Hell Does Freeze Over" t-shirts, which celebrate the demanding rigor of U. of C. and the bone-chilling winters. Some people will tell you the squirrels here act the way they do from generations of exposure to radiation, leaking from the isotopes buried deep beneath Regenstein Library, where Enrico Fermi and his mad-scientist colleagues first split the atom. Not true. The squirrels here HAVE to get in your face to get a morsel of your bagel, because we're always walking around reading books and looking off into space, contemplating big questions. It's the only way they can get our attention. It's adaptive evolution. You'll learn about it in bio.