As Hurricane Sandy ravaged the Boston area on October 29th, Harvard students hunkered down in their dorm rooms, blithely forgetting about the fortunes of the various animals who inhabit Harvard Yard. However, as it turns out, these fauna were affected just as much—if not more—than their human counterparts.
Hundreds of squirrels were trapped in cramped enclaves in trees for hours on end without food and water. In a tense atmosphere brought about by the lack of personal space and the continual fear of a painful death, the squirrels also realized that, without local tourists and Harvard students present, there was nobody left to annoy but themselves. Therefore, they turned on each other, and a battle of epic proportions went down within the tree trunks.
The number of casualties is unclear, but, according to Harvard maintenance workers who have been clearing the corpses from the Yard, the number of deaths rivals that of the great war between the squirrels of the northern half of the Yard and those of the southern half over the South’s right to secede from the Yard-wide confederation and retain their right to impose forced manual labor among the chipmunks.
However, the hurricane did not only affect mammals. Numerous eyewitness reports affirm that an itsy bitsy spider was attempting to climb a waterspout on Widener Library. “I was in a Crimson Key tour gathered in front of the wall, and I saw the little guy scramble up into the gutter. He looked like he was on a mission,” said local Canadian tourist François Bouchard. “But, then again, that was before the storm really got started.”
When the rain came down, it washed the spider out. The arachnid has been missing ever since. “I hope it’s not dead, but if it is, then that would kind of work with the whole Titanic thing that Widener has going,” commented Bouchard. Experts agree that when the sun comes out and dries up all the rain, if the spider is still alive, it will go up the spout again.
Thankfully, most of the mice, rats, and cockroaches were able to escape the full brunt of the storm by fleeing into freshman dorms.
