You may have read the news brief in last Friday's Cardinal detailing two bizarre incidents in California involving dead squid: Hundreds of the tentacled critters washed up on an Orange County beach last Thursday, while just up the coast, on the very same day, a semi hauling frozen squid overturned, blocking the road and bringing down power lines. Though the two were reportedly "unrelated," my suspicion was piqued.
I then caught a network news report on the squid-beaching. At first I just laughed at the footage, which featured all manner of thrill-seekers milling about the sand, peering down at the putrefying squid carrion, leaning in to snap a few pictures and, my personal favorite, poking at the carcasses with sticks.
And that's when it hit me: What if these seemingly innocuous bags of rotting mollusk meat had been rigged with explosives? What if their ink sacs were really filled with bits of shrapnel, or radioactive waste, or anthrax? What if they were really the latest attempt by terrorists to infiltrate our borders and menace our unsuspecting citizenry?
What if they were suicide squid, with their slimy cephalopod brothers-in-arms hijacking a truck mere miles away, in a coordinated attack on us and our infrastructure by a school of spineless thugs who hate us for our freedom, perhaps even our skeletons? (Not a very well-coordinated attack, admittedly, but not bad for a rogue band of aquatic evildoers with no land mobility or lungs.)
Intrigued and feeling downright tingly for thinking thoughts no decent American has any business thinking, I went in search of squid lore to support my conspiracy theory.
It turns out scientists are concerned their population could be booming due to the oceans warming and overfishing thinning some of their few predators. I also discovered the squid's eye is incredibly similar in structure to the human eye, only "perfected"-yes, a few of those wacky "creation scientists" use the squid's eye as an argument for intelligent design.
Upon this revelation of squid fraternity with the religious right, it all fell into place: Two days before the squid incidents, Christian conservative Dr. James Dobson "outed" SpongeBob in a speech at a dinner celebrating President Bush's inauguration, and in the process tossed up a big, stinking red herring.
While the country was busy making SpongeBob gay jokes, the suicide squid were conducting a test mission, with the knowledge, possibly even support of the upper echelons of the U.S. government, paving the way and providing a basis for the next facet of the global "war on terror."
Forget about secret spy missions to Iran laying the groundwork for invasion-the next front is not on the axis of evil at all. According to U.S. Navy data, the oceans cover 71 percent of the globe-that's 71 percent of the globe that is now potentially harboring and churning out a souped-up tide of invertebrate insurgents.
Indeed, under the "Bush Doctrine," you're either for us or against us, and the oceans have quite plainly given us "the tentacle."
And lest you call me crazy, when you set out on that first springtime stroll around a thawed Lake Mendota and a suicide squid flops at your feet and detonates an ink sac full of rusty nails, you were warned...
Holly Noe’s column runs each Friday. Shoot her an e-mail at [email protected].