In C-Ville Weekly, Jordy Yager writes about the pattern of middle-class kids moving away from Charlottesville for college, but returning a decade or two later. This is a pattern I’ve seen in the past 20 years—I’m 35—as many of my friends decided to shake the dust of this crummy town off of their feet and move to Brooklyn / Austin / Seattle / San Francisco, only to return 5, 10, or 15 years later, having figured out that Charlottesville isn’t so crummy after all. (Some, of course, remain happily in their new city.) Those of us who never left looked a bit lame to some (“no, seriously, he still just lives in Charlottesville”), but now look prescient for escaping the gravity of New York, never having needed to share a 600 square foot apartment with three roommates, the rent eating up 70% of our budgets.

Warning: If you’re sensitive to stories about privileged white kids becoming yuppies, this story is going to annoy the hell out of you.

Surely you’ve noticed the flatted squirrel corpses paving every road in the area. There have been lots of theories as to what’s going on (bumper crop of ignorant squirrel pups, shortage of food, squirrel migration, and nothing’s different but us talking about it, among others), and in the Daily Progress, Bryan McKenzie explains the squirrelpocalypse. Last year there were an amazing number of acorns, supporting an unusually large population of squirrels. This year, there’s a very low number of acorns, so the offspring of that large population are competing over a small number of acorns. The interesting twist is that many of these squirrels are actually trying to migrate, seeking out a new home with more food. McKenzie writes:

Meriwether Lewis reported large numbers of squirrels were swimming the Ohio River. He sent his Newfoundland dog, Seaman, into the water to harvest the rodents for dinner.

“They were fat and I thought them, when fried, a pleasant food,” he wrote to then-President Thomas Jefferson.

Massive squirrel migrations were reported across the upper Midwest, New England and into South Carolina in 1809, 1819, 1842, 1852 and 1856, according to various studies of the phenomenon.

Apparently there are just occasional confluences of factors that cause huge numbers of squirrels to wander across the countryside, and we’re having our first such event since 1968.

Some jackass strolled into the Kroger on Hydraulic carrying an AR-15 today, the Daily Progress reports, leading to at least one person wisely fleeing the store and calling 911. Police quickly arrived and detained the 22-year-old, before releasing him since, in Virginia, there’s nothing illegal about strolling around a grocery store carrying an assault weapon. Police figure this was an open carry demonstration. This is a thing, wherein people who know that it is legal to openly carry will go into crowded public places while carrying guns, on the theory that people will eventually stop being terrified and get used to this as a reasonable behavior. Basically, First Amendent : Westboro Baptist Church :: Second Amendment :: these jackasses. Anyhow, Kroger tossed the guy off their property and told him not to come back, since there’s nothing illegal about throwing a dangerous jerk off of your private property.