Doctor's Orders is a weekly satirical column in which two unprofessional, definitely fake doctors offer up prescriptions for their Phoenix patients.
Congratulations on surviving Icepocalypse 2015, now a time-honored Elon tradition. Not all of us were so lucky this year. As reported by one forlorn Phoenix on ye olde Yik Yak, one of our very own campus squirrels froze to death last week (allegedly — it’s Yik Yak, after all. But let’s give this poor squirrel the benefit of the doubt and a proper send-off.)
Our sincerest condolences to the squirrel community during this time of mourning. We hope the squirrel’s nut stockpile is evenly divided amongst its friends and loved ones. No fighting over that one really good nut — that one should be buried with the dearly departed.
We’re prescribing a day of remembrance for this fallen furry friend and all the squirrels who have gone to the great oak tree in the sky. At this time, to fully experience this column, please queue up a video of “Amazing Grace” being played on the bagpipes.
Show some respect.
The proud Elon squirrels (scientific name Phoenicius Squirrelius) have long been the unofficial mascot of our school. The ratio of squirrels to Phoenix on campus is approximately 10,000 to one, but the Phoenix is usually on the sidelines at sporting events, too busy pumping up what we’ll generously call the crowd.
Let’s reminisce about some of our favorite memories with our squirrely friends, which we will retroactively attribute to the frozen squirrel because we didn’t know him or her personally, and none of the other squirrels responded to our requests for comments.
Before we can offer our touching eulogy, this squirrel must no longer remain anonymous. We could call him Nutsy, because squirrels have very few interests. We could call him Elsa, but we would be as bad as every other social media site using that tired joke for cheap laughs and easy likes. Yik Yak would eat that up.
Let’s call the squirrel Sandy Cheeks because a new Spongebob movie came out this month, and all those vintage Nickelodeon references are riper than ever.
Sandy Cheeks was a dear friend and an important part of the campus, if not to the student body, then at least to the squirrel population. For all we know, Sandy was the squirrel mayor. Every classic squirrel story could have been Sandy. #IAmThatSquirrel.
Who could forget the time we saw a squirrel escaping with a dropped chicken sandwich outside of McEwen? Or that other, different time we saw a squirrel escaping with a dropped chicken sandwich outside of McEwen? Oh, Sandy. You warmed our hearts, but nothing could warm yours enough to keep it beating.
Now that we got that out of the way, we need to address the rest of the squirrel community, a marginalized group here at Elon. This status is exacerbated by the fact that Smith Jackson does not send them winter weather updates, and they are markedly unprepared in all events of extreme conditions.
Winter isn’t over yet, and you guys need to take precautions so you don’t end up like Sandy over there in her frozen grave, destined to live on as a Yik Yak joke because Elon’s campus is so intellectually deprived students get off on the deaths of small woodland critters. We’re not excluding ourselves from that (see: this column).
Please keep Sandy Cheeks in your thoughts and prayers, but if you could also please keep any comparisons
between Sandy and Scrat from the Ice Age movies to yourself, that’d be just super. It’s too soon. Can you believe they’re making a fifth one of those? Even Shrek didn’t make it to five movies.