As a science-fiction writer, I often wonder as to what species shall succeed humans as the primary intelligent life form on earth, after, at some unsure time, we with a surety eliminate ourselves.
As I pushed Megan's granddaughter in her carriage through the woods and she enjoyed the ability of an Uncle Beast-powered engine, that did wheel stands over deadfalls and stumps, could fly up to three feet high and accelerated through drifts of dried oak leaves to her giggling glee, I noticed overhead, that there was a rain of missiles.
Megan looked up and said, "These goddamned squirrels in this place are like monkeys throwing shit at you at the zoo."
Sure enough, as Emma held her hands over her head to shield against dropped acorns, we were pelted by a good half-dozen tree-rats, who clicked and clacked and chattered to one another, one big fat one clucking down at us.
Unfortunately, this is close suburban terrain where there has been no hunting for over 40 years, resulting in tree-rats who have, like the hood-rats in the nearby city, adapted to an environment free of human retribution, thus evolving into creatures of unparalleled, obnoxious belligerence.
These squirrels have become Civilized!
However, apparently due to superior genetics, these suburban waterfront squirrels have begun advancing into a tribal state, even as the defective hoodrats, hopelessly inbred, have devolved beneath the cultural level of pre-tribal hunter gatherers, to some junkyard parody of a human.
Could it be, that in a post-human world squirrels will contest with Raccoons and rats for world dominance, for the lordship of our abandoned cities and fallow burbs?
Equidistant Drowning Babies: Confessions of A Virulent Race Traitor
