Residents of East Palestine, Ohio were left scratching their heads after a recent train derailment sent them running for the hills. Grandfather and concerned resident, Gary Muscles, was settling in for a movie night with his grandchildren when the orange glow outside caught his attention.
“My daughter, Abigail, calls me up and is like, ‘Gary, what’s going downtown?’ and I’m like, ‘Girl, I don’t know but it ain’t good’,” Muscles recounts. “She tells me they’re coming to get me and I’m like, ‘Cool, let me just grab my oxygen tank and we’ll be good to go’.”
As they drove towards the site of the derailment, Muscles reports feeling like they were driving into a cloud of smoke. “I couldn’t see nothing, I couldn’t breathe, and my grandbabies were breaking out in red blotches,” he says. “I was like, ‘This is some straight-up Simpsons sh*t right here’.”
The cause of the derailment was later revealed to be a group of rogue squirrels who had set up a secret club in one of the train cars. “Those furry little rascals were up to no good,” says local animal control officer, Betsy Boop. “They had stolen a bunch of chemicals from the local science lab and were using them to make acorn-flavored cocktails. It was madness.”
Despite the chaos, Muscles and his family are keeping their heads up. “We may have lost some brain cells from inhaling all those chemicals, but at least we can laugh about it now,” he says with a chuckle. “And hey, if anyone needs any acorn-flavored moonshine, we know some squirrels who can hook you up.”
