It’s furry. It pounces. It leaps. It eats. A lot.
Yes, I’m talking about a squirrel. Not just any squirrel, however. This squirrel is special. This squirrel goes to IU.
He has been burying his various nuts all over campus for years and this spring he’s ready to take on fraternity rush. You see, he usually spends most winter breaks hibernating and dreaming of finding all the acorns he buried in the fall, but this winter break was accompanied by terrible nightmares.
This year he was awoken early, nest covered in frozen sweat, but happy to be alive. He assumes that a poisoned pecan was behind his violent, nut-less nightmares and decides to do some research. After all, he is working towards a Ph.D. in botany and is therefore used to copious amounts of research. The adventure begins.
Still feeling a little tired and a bit hazy from his lack of sleep, he climbs down from his nest in McNutt and starts checking out his surroundings. As he is on a mission to leave no nut unturned, something odd catches his eye. A bus full of the most beautiful female squirrels he has ever seen rolls right by him and on to Walnut Street. Confused as to why he had never laid eyes on any of these benevolent ladies, he starts to chase after it in hopes of seeing where it takes them.
Before long, he watches the bus come to a halt and drop them off outside of a tree with Greek letters on it. It clicks. This is the mythical thing his friend Chester once told him about: sorority rush. He and all the other guys had always planned on seeing it for themselves but always ended up hibernated right through it.
Now resting on his hind legs and bushy tail, he decides that the only way these fluffy females would talk to him is if he becomes a member of a Greek tree as well. With that in mind, he meanders back to McNutt to check out the IFC and GreekRank websites. After some thorough searching, he decides that his top two choices are the Maple chapter of Phi Tau Pi and the Cedar chapter of Phi Xi Mu.
The first rush event at Phi Tau Pi rolls around and he comes prepared to man-flirt in his new L.L. Nut boots. As the day wears on he becomes tired and the conversations start getting stale. Lucky for him though, he unknowingly starts talking to the chapter’s current president about how as a senior in high school he was recognized by Animal Planet’s “Planet Earth” series for being the second most intelligent animal, barely trailing the notorious Spelling Bee. And though it stung to be runner up, he found it humbling.
The president admired his intelligence and desire to “be a part of something bigger than himself", and he decided it was time to give out the first bid of the spring.
Receiving a bid at Phi Tau Pi was a dream come true. He chose to sign right away in the hopes of being able to meet the sorority squirrels as soon as possible. He thought to himself about how his nightmares had suddenly turned into a beneficial, life-changing experience and was just beginning to get lost in a philosophical trance when a brother handed him a coconut and instructed him to start chugging. From that point on he has no further memory of the night, but from what he’s been told, it was a lot of fun.
