Squirrels Do Their Part in Educating America’s Youths on College Campuses

The fur is flying over the Web site Campus Squirrel Listings, specifically the allegation that UCLA has few “squirrel-friendly trees” and that some of its resident creatures “look underfed and mangy.” (I mean the squirrels, not the students.) The Web site collects reports from schools across the nation about their squirrels (gottshall.com/squirrels/campsq.htm). And it postulates a correlation between the quality of higher learning on a campus and the health of the college’s squirrel population.

That there should be varied opinions about UCLA’s squirrels is no surprise, inasmuch as the campus is about the size of a Third World country.

Anyway, contributor Mark Chen wrote to say that far from being weak, the squirrels he’s seen at UCLA have become aggressive from “continuous close contact with humans.... [The] squirrels will actually steal our Taco Bell when we’re not looking. After a rather harrowing experience, we learned to never ever again place our tacos on the ground.”

Well, college is a place to learn.

Speaking of fur ... : Lindsay Conner of L.A. found a store in Westwood that caters to animals with big horns (see photo).

Talk about urban sprawl: Rona Visser found a section of what appeared to be the City of Angels bordering the Canadian province of New Brunswick. But there’s no secession movement afoot. Someone had actually removed a couple of letters from a sign in the town of Alma.

Pardon this interruption: Steve Thompson of La Crescenta told the Web site laradio.com about a trip to Seattle, where he heard a station with a “Quick 96” format, which “played seven-second-long snippets from about a thousand different songs....

“Their slogan was ‘The best parts of your favorite songs.’ ” It was a gimmick, of course, a transition period, while the station switched owners and formats.

Thompson recalled the time KFAC-FM (92.3) became KKBT in 1989. In the interim, the station broadcast the sound of a heart beating for several hours.

Later, when KSCA-FM (101.9) abandoned a format of news and contemporary rock, the station played a laugh track for 12 straight hours before going the Spanish-language route.

Another approach: Sometimes there’s no hint when a change at a radio station is in the offing. Don Barrett’s book, “Los Angeles Radio People,” recalled how disc jockey Gene Weed of Top 40 music KFWB signed off on March 10, 1968: “We’ll be right back with more music after the news.”

The music died right there. KFWB immediately went all-news.

MiscelLAny: The solar eclipse the other day reminded Marie Harvey (a.k.a. Only in L.A. Moms) about a similar event on the family farm in Westminster when she was a girl.

“All of a sudden there was no bright sun, only twilight,” she said. “And I guess it confused the animals.

“The first thing we could see was our cow, Bossy, down in the field coming toward the barn. She only went there at night. And the chickens ran to their coops and hopped in their perches to go to sleep.”

Good thing I was indoors working and didn’t notice the latest eclipse. Otherwise, I might have imitated Bossy in my own way and strolled across the street to the saloon.

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Steve Harvey can be reached at (800) LA-TIMES, Ext. 77083, by fax at (213) 237-4712, by mail at Metro, L.A. Times, 202 W. 1st St., L.A. 90012 and by e-mail at steve.harvey@latimes.com.