The other day, as I wended my way across the Nike campus on an errand, I saw a remarkably large squirrel leap from a tree to the side of my building. He landed adroitly, clinging to the stone face, and I paused to watch.

He was a most curious beasty, for his head seemed a bit overlarge, and as smoothly, bushily furry as his tail; no ear, no eye, no bulging cheek could be seen, simply a mass of fur. For a moment I considered the possibility that this was in fact a tail and I had caught two squirrels in a particularly twisted and acrobatic flagrante delecto. However, it was clear as this rodent (of unusual size, even) made his way up the stonework towards the windows that he was alone, and whatever oddities he possessed were in his person, not in his procreative proclivities. As he disappeared around the corner of the bulwark, I thought I saw that the smooth surface was in fact an oversized ear, covering some of his face.

A mutant squirrel! I had not seen such a thing since college, where dire rumors spread of the capabilities and arcane origins of the campus squirrels. Why would one appear here, far from Cleveland effluvium and Case science laboratories? Perhaps my eyes had deceived me. Or perhaps, just perhaps, it wasn’t a squirrel at all. Perhaps it was a spy-robot sent by Adidas to peer in Nike’s windows! Its swollen cranium conceals a camera! Its flapping ears rise to expose the lens! I amused myself with this fancy as I walked on my way, until I finally realized why such a thing could be no more than a fancy, a speculative piece of nonsense, a moment’s pleasant imagining… the only design department on that side of the building is Sunglasses.

Obviously it was a mutant squirrel spy-bot from Oakley.