acrophobic squirrel
Usually they skitter into the treetops and wreak havoc on young shoots, or perch there like alien sentinels: but this one was flattened out onto the lower trunk of a great oak, barely a metre above the ground. The oak was surrounded by brambles up to that height. The grey squirrel looked like it was camouflaging itself moth-fashion, or regulating its temperature like a lizard.


I stopped and watched it, close enough for its beady eyes to know I was there and move further up if it needed to. I waited long enough for it to get restless and move on for fresh shoots, but it didn't. I wondered what the life of a squirrel consists in, just eating and watching and walking all day: the same as mine, in fact. It's probably typing up its LJ account of the meeting now.

Convinced it was some psychological battle it was knowingly dragging me into, I felt myself wavering. I could just leave; wonder whether it had ever moved after I left, and in which direction. Eventually I braved it out and it unfolded a little from its moth/lizard configuration. It nibbled at the interstices of the oak bark. Now I knew it was only doing it to psych me out; there's no juicy squirrel food in there. Then it stretched its neck and nibbled a frond of bramble. How very odd. It shifted its position.

Finally it began to move itself; but around. Not up. It made a slow circuit of the trunk, still at a metre high with all that vasty expanse above it. It actually came round in a full circle, stretched out to the brambles again. At last it climbed down into the thickets, where I could no longer see it.

If we could breed from this rare placid, acrophobic grey squirrel, how much better shape our woodlands would be in. No more carpets of chewed-off sprigs. Perhaps the red squirrels could return and live in the canopy while the greys crept about keeping the undergrowth trim.

A squirrel threatened to mug me recently in Highgate Wood. It approached me menacingly, then backed off when I stood my ground. First time I've seen it: they're usually timid country cousins out here. Not like the inner-city parks, where the squirrels bound up to you reeking of Special Brew and do the rampant paw-waggling that means 'Scuse me, guv, got'ny spare sandwiches?'. I was on Boston Common once, over in their home range, trying to entice one of the cutie-pies with a crumb of expensive cheese. It didn't seem that tempted. Then I saw under the bench half a packet of double chocolate Oreo cookies. The tubby little wretch was just glazed over with hyper-sugar-something.