The Indian giant squirrel is well documented. The American red squirrel is also very well documented. In the family Sciuridae there are myriad well documented species. There is one glaring omission: the American Giant Red Squirrel.
Here is an artists interpretation of the mythological Megared Squirrel:
I cannot stress enough how mythological this thing is. Megared squirrels are not real. The Giant American Red Squirrel is not this big. Look at that thing. That’s ridiculous. Do you think it could hide if it were actually that big?! Seriously, jeez!
The Giant American Red Squirrel is giant comparatively to other squirrels (of course), but not mythologically giant in comparison to large buildings. Let’s use record store terms to put it in perspective. If a Giant American Red Squirrel were to be compared to a 12″ record its head would be just smaller than one (basically like a human’s, but y’know a squirrel).
American Giant Red Squirrels generally live by large bodies of water, are nocturnal and proportionally more skittish than their smaller counterparts (which makes them hard to photograph or study).
While a small squirrel must drink some water to keep itself healthy a giant one must drink more water (thus living by large bodies of water; fresh water – did I forget to mention that the first time, well, it’s large bodies of fresh water they live by).
Introducing the new Redscroll Records T-Shirt (as shown by Al):
.JPG)
.JPG)
The shirts are available at the shop in sizes S-XXL and are $12 – printed on American Apparel by our friends at Print Indie and designed by our friend Todd Rogers (Teaessare).
[Read beyond the page break for the actual thinking behind the shirts or don’t because you prefer the fun story of The Giant American Red Squirrel.]
You might remember that our last sale flyer had a red squirrel on it. Here it is:
That squirrel’s inspiration was simply our name, Redscroll, which often gets heard as a variety of other things in spoken conversation. Redscroll? Red Squirrel? Red’s Crawl? (I’ve actually never heard that last one. We do get calls for the Red Cross every so often though which isn’t really that close when spoken – maybe when written/read.)
The squirrel reappeared in sticker form recently – the same design as the front of the shirts:
The size of the squirrel with what must be a 12″ record (because of it’s label to vinyl ratio) is very big. That was totally a design decision by Todd and we entirely support it. It looks good. Here’s a doodle Al (the guy wearing/holding the shirts above) did on break recently further confirming the aural folly:
So, what’s up with the “DRINK MORE WATER,” written on the back? Well, it’s got nothing to do with squirrels. It’s got to do with making a strong declarative statement that mostly no one would disagree with. “DRINK ALL THE WATER,” is too strong and if one tried to do that it would not be advantageous to their health. “DON’T DRINK ANY WATER,” is absolutely something we don’t support and I’d be hard pressed to find anyone that did support that. “Drink some water,” is not a strong statement so that’s right out. It is also notable that this originally came from a conversation about http://thepluralofvinyl.com. The statement behind that website is a bit flawed and whereas it can be a bit of an annoyance to hear the word, “vinyls,” when referencing records the fact is “vinyls” is not entirely grammatically incorrect though it generally is used in the world of polymers (for instance) rather than audio records.
