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October 16, 2004
Why Books Are Made of Paper, Not Squirrels
(Please put on your levity hat before you read this...)
In a recent discussion about the history of papermaking, I recently thought how beneficial it is that books are made of paper, and not our favorite small woodland creature, the squirrel *. Thus, i came up with many reasons why such a thing is not so:
- Books are made up of many pages, thus necessitating many squirrels. This creates multiple problems:
- Squirrels like to run around alot, therefore your book would never be in the same place, be it a library or a bookcase
- Squirrels do not like to be packed tightly into book form, thus your book's 'pages' would constantly be scattered across the entire area in which the squirrels roam
- Squirrels need to eat to survive, and so you would incur not only the initial cost of the book but the additional cost of squirrel food to maintain your squirrels
- Squirrels have fur, and ink does not adhere easily to non-uniform surfaces, plus hair falls out periodically, which would cause words to randomly disappear from your book
- The animals could have their hair shaved off, but having 1,472 shaved and word-tattooed squirrels for your War and Peace novel would just look creepy
- Squirrels only live to be less than 10 human years old, and so you would either have to:
- keep losing pages as the squirrels expired, and give up your book entirely once the last squirrel passed on;
- keep replacing your squirrels with new ones (which would incur additional costs to the aforementioned ones)
- Like many natural animals, squirrels reproduce to continue their species, and so eventually you would acrue many new 'pages' with no words on them, and you'd have to feed these too, or give them away
- The entreprenurial among us might see this as a good opportunity to go into the writing material business, as book consumers could easily become book-material suppliers
- This could also solve your expiring 'page' problem, if you used the new squirrels to replace your absent pages
- Squirrels are naturally timid and skeptical creatures who can run very fast, so getting your hands on one in order to read it would be difficult
- Squirrels have sharp teeth and claws, and so even if you did manage to get a hold of one, be prepared to endure or defend against deep wounds to your fingers and hands
As you can see, there are many reasons why books are not made of squirrels, some of which are detailed above. If you have any more reasons, please let me know. Paper is for books, and squirrels are for, uh, entertainment :)
* a.k.a. 'dawgie' to some people i know ;)
Posted by MaTT at October 16, 2004 07:20 PM
Comments
Thank you for answering a burning question which I had long longed to tackle. My only addition would be that squirrels are not only good for entertainment but they make excellent party hats and party favors, not to mention training one as an attack squirrel. (You know, to drop out of a tree in front of someone and then slowly approach them while chattering - thus driving the subject to panic and flee. It's been done before!)
Posted by: Alan at October 16, 2004 11:41 PM
"Entertainment"? I thought that was what you used little boys for!
You said "small woodland creature"! And it wasn't funny! At all!
What if you just continued using dead squirrels in your book? Would that really be creepier than using living ones? Explain.
Posted by: srah at October 17, 2004 01:30 AM
The dead squirrels would get all nasty and decompositionalized... and probably attract bugs :P And 'small woodland creature' *is* funny! And squirrels are more fun than little boys, as explained by alan, b/c you can't make party hats out of little boys... ;D
Posted by: MaTT at October 18, 2004 04:50 PM
I would very much like to receive a squirrel as a party favor. This would be the coolest party ever.
Posted by: Rachel at October 18, 2004 04:54 PM
Some little boys *ought* to be made into party hats.
Posted by: srah at October 19, 2004 09:49 PM
Matt, I think you have been in Michigan too long! Come home already!
Posted by: Mom at October 27, 2004 10:37 PM
Michigan makes people weird. I should know; I've been here >22 years!
Posted by: srah at October 28, 2004 12:27 AM
I wish I had a levity hat...
Posted by: srah at November 17, 2004 03:45 PM
So do I
Posted by: Jez at November 22, 2004 08:38 AM
You really need to post more. You can't be that busy. :o)
Posted by: Mere at December 3, 2004 02:52 PM