The Andersonville artist discovered opinions run deep over squirrels while painting an image of one of them on a building.
Forget about this country’s vicious political divide. Andersonville artist John Airo has learned just how aggressively split people are about something that might come across as nuts: squirrels.
He discovered this while painting a mural a few years ago of one of the bushy-tailed rodents on a shop on Montrose Avenue.
He says he’d hear from passersby, “I love squirrels, they’re so funny, so cute.”
“Then,” he says, “there were the haters.”
One time, a car spun by, and one of the young men inside hollered at Airo: “F— squirrels!”
“I was looking for a text message, figuring it was someone I knew” joking around, Airo says. But, “no one’s confessed to being the guy that yelled that.”
“It was mean, it was guttural.
