A friend of mine is obsessed with killer squirrels. The idea of a marauding squirrel leaping out of the trees to attack unwary passers-by intrigued me so I decided to write a song about it. You can listen to a newly recorded version on myspace.
It turns out, though, she has more reason to be obsessed than I’d initially thought. Back in 2006 the Metro reported on a squirrel in Florida called Bruce (after Die Hard star Bruce Willis) who carried out a ‘week-long reign of terror which saw him take on three women, a toddler and his father, and several police officers,’ surviving a beating and being pepper-sprayed before he was finally apprehended.
Last year the Mirror went as far as to list the ‘Top ten squirrel attacks’, including a woman in Passau, Germany being attacked in her living room and a fatal attack on a dog in the Russian town of Lazo (although a local pine cone shortage was cited as a mitigating factor) .
Just a few months ago a columnist for the Edinburgh Evening News claimed to have been attacked by one of these ‘tree rats’, and that was after several ‘stalking’ incidents.
Even in the world of fiction – children’s fiction at least – the idea of ‘scary squirrels’ seems to be catching on, according to the racy ‘Library News’ column in the Abington Journal.
I predict killer squirrels are going to be big, protentially displacing the current fox frenzy to become the next national bushy-tailed bête noires. So it’s handy that I’ve already got a song ready to cash in on the trend. Maybe I should get it onto i-tunes, though, before it really takes off.
How it was done
I wrote the song on acoustic guitar, as I usually do, but for the recording I wanted to try something a little different (and quicker) so I used a Rhodes VST (Virtual Studio Technology) plugin for the main chords and a simple but effective analogue sequencer plugin called Anemone for the bassline and some additional parts. For the coda I added a cello sound and some recorded acoustic guitar, beefed up by doing several overdubs.
The recording is a fairly rough and ready affair, taking just a few days, and the song probably requires a little more work. Let me know what you think.
Tags: Killer squirrel, Rodent, VST plugin