Professor Henry was working for the FBI. He had been hired by the Bureau to develop a new technology which would allow agents to enlist squirrels to tap phone lines. With Professor Henry's method, there would be no need for a technician at the phone company to be aware of the phone tap. No one need know about the tap. Just the agent and the squirrel.

It all began one day when Hoover Smith was sitting in his car, on a stake out of a notorious red brick criminal. It was a building wanted for sitting there. And Smith was watching it, making sure the building didn’t try anything tricky. He was watching the squirrels scamper along the telephone wires. He was pretty bored, because if the building did make a move, it would be so painstakingly slow that it would take days to notice. Hoover had a lot of time to stare at scampering squirrels. And we wondered, "Those squirrels must be ticklish. I mean if you held one down and skibble-skibbled his little footsy with a toothpick and said 'koothy kootchy koo!' that little old squirrel would chabber and spuff." And he wondered if all the scads of digital information pulsing and passing through the wires and other high-tech optical filaments and so forth that the squirrels pranced on in any way stimulated the skirlish pads of their nasty little feet.

On Hoover's day off he was swilling coffee at the local TarGunks shop. He was alone at a table reading Properties of Squirrel-Feet when Professor Henry came trundling in like some kind of Rhodesian Ridgeback with sad wet eyes. Old Henry-face saw what Smith was reading, and after ordering a deluxe dissolved oily gunk-ball with foamed cow-puke, he approached Detective Smith and said, "Holy Hatworm, citizen! Are you intrigued by the feet of squirrels?"

"Who are you, there, liver lips?" Asked Hoover Smith.

"My name is Professor Henry. I am intrigued by the feet of squirrels. I am pleased to know I am not the only one who has enjoyed this book by Pauline Probity. Ho-ho, the feet of squirrels hold many possibilities in this world…"

"Maybe they do, and maybe they don't. Who wants to know?"

"Well, I er…."

As the professor mumbled and spat, Hoover, with great dexterity and sneakiness, produced a blow dart coffee straw and fired a dart of truth serum into the forehead of the professor. It took effect immediately. "And you, professor, are you affiliated with any criminals, or are your intentions with regard to the properties of squirrel feet pure and without blame?"

"Oh, " said the professor with a puffy face and earlobes flapping, "I am only interested in truth, wisdom, and apprehending the criminal pissants who undermine the greater good!"

"Alright there, chief. Now, you and I have some work to do."

And the two of them betook themselves to the University of Hard Knox. They began to coax squirrels to work with them. They plied the squirrels with little bits of chewing gum. The squirrels chewed their gum with glee and cooperated. First Hoover and Henry taught the little creatures to communicate by tap dancing in Morse code. The more intelligent squirrels could use all four feet to convey four messages at once. Yes.

Next these two oddball carbon units taught the squirrels to stand still on the phone wires and then come back and tap dance the messages that they had heard pulsing and bit-byting through the wires. Soon there were dozens of dancing squirrels in the service of the FBI sneaking about and prancing and dancing and standing still on phone wires outside the dens of unsuspecting criminal pissants, and then bringing themselves to the Bureau and dancing for their chewing gum.

Wonderful crime fighting technique.

COPYRIGHT 2005 DOUGLAS CLOUD ALL RIGHTS RESERVED