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As a response, killing off all the squirrels is nonsensical and outrageous. Like the rest of America, Hamline’s possible threat for animals that “interfere” with human civilization is to kill them. My expectations for a sensible liberal arts college would include a deviation from the common practice of killing every animal that dares to wander out of their own environment, i.e. the three square blocks of city space we allot for parks for wildlife.

Of course, squirrels are not deer; nor are they timberwolves or endangered snow leopards. But like killing off predators doesn’t solve the problem of encroaching animals, there are also implications for poisoning squirrels every time one decides to enter a building unexpectedly. Without squirrels to eat them, the amount of acorns on the ground would reach dangerous levels, leaving people to slip and fall on all the things on the ground that would accumulate if squirrels weren’t there to pick them up and bring them back to the tree or shove them so adorably into their cheeks.

To abuse a tired cliche, it’s the principle of it. If people think it is their right to kill any animal that has the audacity to try to coexist in the human-owned world, then they are adopting a mentality and an approach that is unable to solve the larger problem. Most animals are not natural interlopers and wouldn’t have cause to roam unless they were not content in their space, whether due to a lack of food or severely size-restricted habitats.

The squirrel who has now become territorial over my dorm is surely not in need of Valentine’s Day chocolates in order to survive. Regardless, I’d vastly prefer to see the little varmit in my bag of chips than to see him dead on the lawn after the exterminator visits, which has been mentioned as a possible solution by Residential Life. Though not an animal rights activist in practice, I will eagerly chain myself to a tree in the logging-protest style if Hamline decides the squirrels are only welcome when they are happy staying in the three trees that the St. Paul metropolitan area offers for all squirrels to share for that “natural environment” feel.