Screwy Squirrel on Head". When he finishes, the dog remarks, "Gee whiz! He hit me with !" Screwy responds with, "Well, don't want to disappoint you, chum," then pulls out that very item and bashes him over the head with it. The final cartoon in the series, "Lonesome Lenny", a broad parody of the characters of George and Lenny from the John Steinbeck novel "Of Mice and Men", ended with a joking reference to indicate that Screwy had been "crushed" to death by his antagonist, who commented "You know, I had a little friend once, but he don't move no more." Both
John Steinbeck who would go on to write a classic early textbook on ecology. Ricketts became a proponent of ecological thinking, in which man was only one part of a great chain of being, caught in a web of life too large for him to control or understand. Meanwhile, Ricketts operated a biological lab on the coast of Monterey, selling biological samples of small animals, fish, rays, starfish, turtles, and other marine forms to schools and colleges. Between 1930 and 1936, Steinbeck and Ricketts became close friends. Steinbeck's wife began working at the lab as secretary-bookkeeper. Steinbeck helped on an informal basis.