Squirrely Linguist

Nobody’s going to believe this but I find I can speak squirrel language.

For months a wild squirrel with a beautiful brown coat has been
visiting the back yard, swinging from branch to branch of the
eucalyptus trees, nibbling at the buds and scrounging on the ground.
When I came close it would scamper up a tree.

The other day as it was perched on the fence I approached slowly,
making a cricket-like noise with my tongue, the one I use on the
parakeet, which answers back.

Well, darned if old Sciuridae didn’t answer me, too, then came
over, stood on its hind legs like a dog and examined my outstretched
hand to see if I had anything to eat. I didn’t but it waited while I
went in the house and got it someunshelled nuts, which it ate.

Prefers almonds and hazelnuts to Brazil nuts, by the way.

DURING AN extremely busy spell at the Manhattan Beach police station in which Sgt. Bob Heathcliff
was handling an assault case and booking a drunk, a woman phoned and
asked sweetly, "Can you tell me where the yo-yo contest is being held?"

Did Robert tear his hair? Did he jerk the phone out by the roots? No,
ma’am, he said he didn’t know, took her number, found out and later
called her back.

How do I know? The man being booked for inebriation told me.

GNAWING THOUGHTS
The wheels of progress creak and groan,
Ofttimes the tires are flat;
Some, contentious, chew the bone,
While others chew the fat.
– G.L. ERTZ

IT TURNS OUT that quite a few people create mental images of the
backs of cars, fancying them as owls, pagodas, lighthouses, manta rays,
rockets, big-eared rabbits and in the case of some 1959 models, a
satiric smile.

This is an obvious avocation, of course, for Southland motorists, who spend so much time looking at the car ahead.
Anyway, Dr. Frank Baxter of SC has been haunted by the back of Volkswagens. Reading Thor Heyerdahl’s "Aku-Aku" the other night, the message came through. They resemble the great stone faces on Easter Island. Look for yourself.

TRAFFIC DETAIL– Betcha
not half the motorists know it’s against the law to drive with parking
lights on — Section 618.5 of the vehicle code. The LAPD doesn’t
enforce it but a local man got a ticket upstate for the offense . . .
Another motorist is angry at the parking meters onHilgard Avenue at
UCLA. At a glance they seem to state five hours for $.05. He put in two
nickels but had a ticket when he returned to his car. It’s $.05 for
each hour with a five-hour limit. He calls them "Las Vegas meters" . .
. And while others complain of too much enforcement, an insurance man
says there isn’t enough. His car was hopelessly wedged in by a car
parked in the red zone near 8th and Alvarado. When he called a passing
policeman’s attention to his plight the officer said, "You really have
a problem" and went on.

ENVIRONMENT
is everything, some sociologists say. Which may explain this printed
note an astonished Bel-Air resident found in his mailbox:
"Exceptionally clean cut young man . . . who is now preparing the
greatest film phenomenon ever . . . desires to live in serene
surroundings, guest house or other accommodations on beautiful estate.
Your consideration is gratefully appreciated." He didn’t find a home
there.

Wrong Number

Tonight as usual TV addicts will turn on a program titled "77 Sunset Strip," a private eye action thriller featuring Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Roger Smith, Edward Byrnes, beautiful girls in deep trouble and a reverberating and contagious theme song.

The
address 77 Sunset Strip is a phony. There’s no such number. It has no
significance except it sounded good when the program was put together.

However,
the office front used in the drama is authentic. It is the office of
the Mary Webb Davis modeling agency, 8532 Sunset Blvd., next to Dino’s
Lodge, also featured in the series. Of course, facsimiles of the office
front, the parking lot and Dino’s have been built on a Warner Bros.
sound stage. This is what people see on TV.

BUT THIS TOUCH of
realism has had a strange effect. Life is not the same around the
agency — which furnishes models for film commercials, fashion shows
and photographic ads — since the program became popular. Incidentally,
it has been there for 12 years.

Mail keeps coming there for Zimbalist,
and tourists tie up traffic stopping for a look and to snap pictures of
the office front. As a result, Otis Jenkins, the cleanup man, works
twice as hard polishing the brass on the door.

One other
thing, Mary Webb Davis hasn’t mentioned it to the gang at Warner Bros.,
but the handle of the door in the studio replica is on the wrong side.

A NEW LINCOLN cent
will be put in circulation on Abe’s birthday, next Thursday. A few are
out already. Lincoln’s head is the same as on the others, but the
reverse or "tails" side will have a design of the Lincoln Memorial.

And
before people become befuddled as they usually are by new coins or any
rumors about them, Genghis Cohen, Hollywood numismatist, passes along
the information that they aren’t fakes, they aren’t rare, they aren’t
going to be recalled, and coin dealers are not about to pay premium
prices for them.

By the way, the proper word is cent, not penny, a colloquialism, but people have never bought it.

STOP THE presses! A National Geographic news bulletin, which came in the mail, sates, "The male pipefish,
like its relative the seahorse, incubates its young in a blood pouch
into which the female has deposited the eggs. Understandably, for many
years, the males were thought to be females. Even after the sexes were
distinguished in 1831, a controversy over the matter raged for
decades."

A moment of silence, everyone, to pity the poor pipefish.

* *

THE PUBLIC PRINTS — Tom and Helen Ferril’s
weekly Rocky Mountain Herald of Denver has a town-naming game going.
Recent creations: Dirty, Wash.; Tomato, Kan.; Five, Minn.; Kiss, Me.;Yernamis, Md.; Hittor, Miss.; and Feeling, Ill. . . . As you may have read, Hedy Lamarr
and her estranged husband, Howard Lee, are exchanging legal insults.
Meanwhile, back at Aspen, Colo., where ski lodges are springing up like
jacks-in-the-box (it isn’t mushroom country), Lee’s luxurious new Villa
Lamarr, Time magazine reports, is being called Hedy’s Beddies.

LAST ROUNDUP
When a horse to heaven is consigned
It is bound to leave its whoas behind.
— JOSEPH P. KRENGEL

WHILE WE’RE on this animal kick, Gene Coughlin, an incorrigible pixie, wishes to unleash the following on the world:

The only one who knows if a giraffe has halitosis
Is another giraffe who wants to rub noses.

AT RANDOM — FM
station KNOB refers to programs featuring vocalists as Tonsil Time . .
. To Judge David W. Williams’ charge that gambling laws were being
enforced mostly against Negroes, Chief Parker expressed surprise that
"one possessed of judicial temperament" would say such a thing. My, my,
look who’s talking about judicial temperament.