Sorry, my doctor told me I had to cut down.
… This would be toward the bottom. Now, PopSome Nuts is not just today’s unfortunately named product. It also serves as a convenient vehicle for me to broach a subject that is rather touchy, though most topical to our times. I’m talking about cockblockery.
Everyone with a cock has — at one time or another — not only been the victim of cockblockery, but, regardless of how loathe we are to admit it, also the perpetrator. As you read this, men all over the world, in bars and at weddings, parties and barbecues, are being cockblocked by complete strangers, trusted friends, even relatives.
I recall having heard years ago about how males of the red squirrel species would instinctually bite off the gonads of neighboring gray squirrels, a species with which the red squirrel is in direct competition. As it turns out, this is not actually true. I had come across this post on Defective Yeti in which Dr. Andrew B. Carey of the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station chalks it up to rural Appalachian lore. According to Carey, “No reliable observations of [nut biting] have been documented, and one scientist proffered the explanation that wounds caused by warble fly larvae in the inguinal region may have prompted speculation about castration.”
No reliable observations of nut biting have been documented
So, while it’s not true that red squirrels do more with nuts than store them away for the winter, it’s still significant that so many people would accept this bit of Appalachian apocrypha as truth. Certainly, nut biting is an aggressive approach to cockblockery, but from a survival of the fittest standpoint, it just makes sense. What better way to get a reproductive leg up on your environmental competition than by truncating their ability to procreate. In our own interactions we could take a page from this rural legend. The next time a douchebag stranger, your douchebag friend, or even your douchebag relative tries to curtail your game, just think back to the legend of the red squirrel, and exercise your evolutionary imperative. Now, go out and pop some nuts.
The Malthusian Proxy 