Once upon a time, when I lived in Calgary, my apartment in Sunnyside had a balcony, where I regularly gave peanuts-in-the-shell to a squirrel who would leap from a branch to my balcony.  One day I came home from SAIT to find peanut shells everywhere in my apartment: I had left the sliding door open, and the squirrel had located the 5kg bag of peanuts on top of the refrigerator, and had eaten, or stashed somewhere, every peanut, leaving only the broken shells on my floor.
I had named him Irving. 
And so began a series of answering machine dialogues with him, using two tape recorders, one of which could speed up the playback to give Irving his high-pitched voice. I'd script these sessions, leaving time in the "Irving" tape for my response, which would be recorded live onto the answering machine as I played back the Irving session. The duels between Irving and myself became weirder and weirder, including a kidnapping (of me) by the RSB: the Red Squirrel Brigade.
The recordings became so popular that I routinely got calls from complete strangers: if I answered, they were disappointed: "Oh, I wanted to hear the next installment of Irving the Squirrel," was a reply I'd get.

nbtfilm