This was my first attempt to generate an image using an AI. The prompt: A giant squirrel, kaiju, looming over a burning city, military aircraft, wwii tanks, civilians and personnel running.

This image has been my phone’s home screen ever since it was generated. Beholding it on a larger screen, I’m riddled with guilt for not yet naming the critter. Following a review of the classic Toho kaiju names for inspiration, I’ve settled on Sciurigon.

Prior to her transformation, Sciurigon was just another Eastern fox squirrel. Her story is similar to that of her Pacific cousins, insofar as her kaiju form was triggered by radiation exposure. Sciurigon slept atop a stash of contaminated acorns she foraged from the Oak Ridge Reservation in Tennessee. As she grew to the monstrous proportions shown here, she likewise grew in anger, as there was not on earth a nut of sufficient size to satisfy her voracious appetite.

She is depicted decimating Columbus, Ohio after a secret government organization (operating from the basement of the Wes Watkins Center for Trade Development) momentarily lured her into a trap set in tandem with the National Guard. They dangled a monstrously mutated buckeye from a crane as artillery took aim. Seeing through the ruse, Sciurigon retaliated by farting a corrosive haze of uranium hexaflouride. Then, by sheer force of will, she manifested a flaming Imperial Star Destroyer and hurled it into the industrial region of the city. Sciurigon’s expression is one of glee because her sole distraction from the curse of her insatiable hunger is the delight she takes in sowing destruction and chaos on a metropolitan scale.

In addition to her ability to fart radioactive gas and materialize items from IPs she now considers lame, Sciurigon’s stats are buffed when absorbing electrical and kinetic energy, making her more difficult to contend with than many other squirrels.

I now leave you to ponder the following: would you rather fight one Godzilla-sized squirrel, or one hundred squirrel-sized Godzillas?