My professor says found footage is a style usually reserved for more interesting subjects. Typically horror. Like bigfoot, or a bear attack, or a scary run-in with a three-armed ghost living in his third floor attic. He doesn’t see my vision: audiences coming together over the overwhelming delight of watching a squirrel eat a walnut and then leaving the theater asking all kinds of thought-provoking questions only found in found footage, like “what happened to the squirrel,” or “what happened to the walnut.”

I plan to enter the found footage film into a really prestigious university competition. The last boy who won the film festival got five hundred dollars and went out to eat with Joe Biden. I think his family knows Joe Biden personally. I don’t know Joe Biden, and neither does my family, but if I win I can pay off the rest of my jet ski.

I got a research grant from the university for making the film, which I used to mail order a jet ski and buy food to feed the local fauna at the nearby public park. Once, I was there for so long I got really hungry and snuck some of the animals’ bread, but then I got nervous that the researchers would catch me snacking and ask for a full refund of the five thousand dollars. Now, I supply my own food.

To appease my professor, I’m trying to get the nuts in the middle of two trees to provoke rival squirrels into a fight. So far, the hickory tree squirrel has eaten two acorns, the oak tree squirrel (of a slightly redder hue than hickory) has eaten five acorns, and neither squirrel has touched the fifteen macadamia nuts I’ve tossed in their direction. I would have used walnuts, but walnuts are my favorite type of nut alongside pistachio, so macadamia nuts are the only ones left in the no peanuts mixed nuts jar my roommate purchased last week.

Hour four of my stakeout. The hickory tree squirrel is approaching the camera. He picks up a macadamia nut. This is it! I make sure the camera is recording and the lens cap is off. I’m finally getting my big break. I’m ecstatic.

I get a call from a number I don’t recognize, and curse my luck. I answer, but quietly so the future audience can still focus on the squirrel. The man is from Amazon. My jet ski was unable to be delivered. The IRS is coming for my family. If I want to save my home, I need to give them five thousand dollars in Visa gift cards right now. The squirrel is eating the macadamia nut. He’s holding it in his little squirrel hands and crunching it adorably. I drop the camera and run to the closest Wal-Mart to buy the gift cards. The squirrel eats the nut. The film rolls.