On Squirrels

The fall of 1902 found budding New York naturalist Francis Fogg on a mission to prove a rather remarkable theory: The common grey tree squirrel is the only mammal in North America that does not urinate.

Fogg conjectured that the tree squirrel's diet of bark and thistles, coupled with the relatively low humidity levels of its habitat range, allowed the arboreal mammal to secrete its waste in the form of wooden pellets from its salivary glands.

Laughed out of the offices of National Geographic, Fogg spent seven years raising funds for a four-month expedition to the wilds of Delaware. The money finally raised, he spent another six months assembling a 50-man team of drunkards, beggars and thieves. Fogg, an experimental cobbler by trade, knew he had neither the skill nor the emotional wherewithal to lead his men into darkest Delaware. There was only one man for that task: Stuart Longrain Coffee, the finest guide in Staten Island.

Fogg knew that Coffee would take some convincing and the price for his services would be high. So on a muggy September morning, Fogg arranged a meeting with the wizened old tracker. Fogg, hoping to appeal to Coffee's sense of adventure and hatred of immigrants, was struck down and killed by a motorized tramsicle not 50 feet from his door.