Creative Ways to Die

When I was in college (waaaaay back in 1988-1992), I used to post to Usenet, quite a bit. I was recently digging through the Google archives of Usenet. I found the below "classic" post.
When I was going to college, squirrels were an ever present danger(?) at Penn State's University Park campus. They were everywhere. They were fat. And they were in no way afraid of humans. God help you if you had squirrel-snacks on your person and weren't terribly aware of your surroundings and the swarms of beady eyes tracking you as you transited the quads.
Any way, during this period of time of posting on Usenet, I found the lovely gem of a newsgroup, alt.suicide.holiday. At the time, it was more an avenue for dark humor than the group of insufferable twats that it became. I've always been a fan of dark humor and it was a perfect outlet for my "creative urges". So, I'm kind of happy that the below survived in the Internet's memory...

Path: gmdzi!unido!mcsun!uunet!wuarchive!psuvax1!psuvm!thj100
From: THJ100@psuvm.psu.edu (Thomas H Jones II)
Newsgroups: alt.suicide.holiday,alt.tasteless,talk.bizarre,alt.horror
Subject: damn tree rats!
Message-ID: <90102.012900THJ100@psuvm.psu.edu>
Date: 12 Apr 90 05:29:00 GMT
Organization: Penn State University
Lines: 54
Posted: Thu Apr 12 06:29:00 1990


    was kinda funny (well, only if youre a sadistic bastard like myself), but
recently a friend of mine was out feeding the local "tame" squirrels which
infest our campus.  those little suckers gotta be about the fattest squirrels
youll ever see.  theyre kinda cool, though, cuz you can just get some nuts and
such, bend down, make a ticking noise and theyll come running to you (after
playing their stupid "im a timid little creature of the forest *blink, blink*
game) and you can hand-feed them.  any way, he did this and things went ok for
a little while till the little f*cker decided that he wanted to see if the
protein you get from flesh (in this case:  human) is any better than the pro-
tein found in the acorns and peanuts.  he bit down and held tight.  supposedly,
it didnt even come off when my friend started to shake his hand around.
    any way, it got me to remembering other things ive seen these squirrels do.
ive seen them jump other people who were feeding them.  ive seen them hop up
on fence posts to beg for food.  and ive seen them JUMP on people who have nuts
in their backpacks and try to get at the nuts (you should see the way people
spaz when *that* happens.)  you ever see those nature films that show sharks in
feeding frenzies?  well, if you go to the student union building and get a bag
of nuts from one of the machines on the ground floor, you can get the squirrels
to do the same thing just by placing the open bag in an open space and calling
the squirrels over.  just amazing to watch sometimes.  (another fun thing to
do while theyre all frenzied is to run screaming into the middle of the group
and tree them.  they sit there chattering at you until you go away and let them
down.)

    any way, on to the suicide part (and, yes, it involves the killer squirrels
from hell, as they are locally known.)  here's my plan:

    go to a local grocery store and buy a coupla bottles of peanut oil (peanut
butter will sufice, but its messy.)  now, if its a sunny day, you can make the
whole suicide look like some kind of terrible accident and all the little tree
rats will be exterminate after your death.  ok, back to the sunny day:  take
the peanut oil and thouroughly coat yourself in it (actually, if you have a
bathtub available, it would be good to take a nice long bath in it so that it
can be soaked into your skin.)  once nicely coated in the oil (people will just
think its suntan oil, hence the desire to do it on a sunny day) go outside to
someplace you know that squirrels hang out (which around here is EVERYWHERE you
go. *argh*)  just lie down and wait.  if you arent feeling particularly pa-
tient, use the squirrel attracting sounds.  assuming that all goes well, a
swarm of ravenous squirrels will gather around you and go nuts (pardon the pun)
and gnaw off all the nutty tasting skin.  it will probably hurt like all hell,
but if they remove a significant portion of your skin, you will die of blood
loss, shock or, if you get "rescued", infection.  maybe even leave a note
saying you kept having visions of the planters peanut man and that he told you
that peanut oil made a great tanning lotion?  eeuu... grisly.  makes my stomach
turn just thinking about it.
    wonder if theyd use it as a base for a movie like the birds, only about the
arborial vermin which infest our campuses:  _Death_From_Above:__A_Story_of_
Mutant_Squirrels_