Shadow Tail's Tale

Prompt 3. Write a story from the point of view of a non-human character. 

                                    Shadow Tail’s Tale

I am a common grey squirrel, (more accurately, a brownish-grey and white squirrel) but my scientific name is Sciurus, which means “Shadow Tail” in Greek, which in my humble opinion describes us perfectly. A suitably attractive name for such a handsome creature!  But sadly, our attractiveness is not widely appreciated. My friends say I have a persecution complex. Maybe they’re right, except that, of course, we are persecuted, so it isn’t a complex, it’s simply a fact.

People call us invaders because we are not native to Britain, but that’s hardly fair. It isn’t as if we came to England of our own free will. We were brought here, probably against our will, from North America, by wealthy landowners, so that they could follow the latest fashion and show off having a rare attraction on their country estates. But that was about a hundred and fifty years ago, so you can’t blame us!

Then, in 1921, the Zoological Society of London thought it would be a good idea to release several of our ancestors to breed in Regents Park. So, naturally, that’s just what they did – bred like squirrels! Then people blamed us because our numbers grew! Of course they did! What on earth did they expect? All over the country the same happened, as a great many of our breed escaped from the fine landscaped estates into the woodlands beyond. Then we simply did what came naturally, for our species to survive.

Once established in the native woodlands we found ourselves in competition with our pretty, dainty, native red-haired cousins. We couldn’t afford to be sentimental. With limited food supplies, it was a case of them or us. Of course, since we were larger & fitter than them, we came out on top. But instead of giving us credit for our superiority, people poured blame on us & launched decades of persecution which continues even nowadays. People even blamed us because for illnesses which we passed on to them. We didn’t do it deliberately. And it wasn’t our fault that we were strong enough to resist the diseases which killed so many of them.

 At least, with their attractive appearance, public opinion is on their side, so given time and a helping hand from the conservationists, they will undoubtedly increase in numbers again. We, on the other hand, are in danger of being culled. Already in some places we are being shot or poisoned and we constantly get called names, which we don’t deserve, like “vermin” or “tree rats”.

People will happily leave out food for foxes and go to great expense to feed the birds, (mainly the pretty ones but also, inadvertently, the wood pigeons & jackdaws!) But they will frequently go to great lengths to keep us away from the food intended for the birds. They often put delicious seeds and nuts in small wire mesh containers, enclosed in a strong wire cage, which makes it nigh on impossible for the larger birds, not to mention the likes of us, to partake of the tempting contents. Some even fit baffles under and over the feeding stations, to stop us from being able to climb up or down to reach the tasty morsels that the songbirds enjoy. So much effort just to keep us away!

But we are very clever & resourceful. Some naturalists, I’ve heard, have at times set up complex obstacle courses, to test whether we are clever enough to reach the carefully safeguarded food. It might involve enormous leaps or crossing a length of rope or tipping things over to reach the goal. Whatever obstacles they devise, we always win!

There is a small garden near where I live with my mate, in a cosy hole in an oak tree, in Carroty Wood, where the owner puts out food for the birds every day. There are mixed seeds and fat balls and suet cakes and best of all, peanuts. At one time, she tried using the feeders in cages to stop us getting the food intended for the birds. However, the small songbirds were not clever enough or persistent enough to work out how to reach the food inside, so she gave up that idea.

So she put up a different kind of feeder, which baffled the blue tits even more. It sat on a pole, full of peanuts, but instead of mesh, they were encased in Perspex. The tits went mad with frustration, being able to see the tasty-looking peanuts without being able to get at them. I was also more than a little confused at first. But then I jumped on the little platform in the front, which was an ideal place to sit and work things out.

It didn’t take me very long to realise that the container had a lid which could be tilted up, allowing access to the nuts inside. I raised the lid, ducked my head down to reach a nut and sat on the platform to eat it at my leisure, leaving the songbirds to eat from their own feeders. Since then, I have visited twice a day, in the morning and the late afternoon, to eat my fill of nourishing ground nuts.

I realised then how thoughtful the garden owner was, providing a feeder especially for us, which only squirrels are clever enough to use. She keeps it topped up regularly and when some of the nuts, which were too hard to reach at the very bottom of the container, started to go mouldy, she cleaned it out and filled up the bottom with wood chips to raise the peanuts to make them easier to reach.

This year as Spring approached, when my thoughts turn to increasing the species, I found a fine young female & we set up a drey together in this oak tree, hoping to produce a litter of kits soon. She, of course, followed my example of obtaining nuts from the special feeder. She generally gets there later than me, so sometimes she must wait until I have had my fill. (I’m afraid I am not enough of a gentleman to let her go first!) But sometimes hunger drives her to alternative sources of food on the feeding station.

Being a bit younger and more agile than I am, she manages to balance on the bendy twigs of a photinia shrub to access a suet cake, encased in a small hanging cage. Sometimes she uses her clever reversable feet to hang upside down to reach a feeder, designed for small birds like tits, with a plastic dome cover to shut out the bigger birds. The owner keeps this stocked with peanuts to please the blue tits, great tits, coal tits and long tailed tits which all come to the garden. My clever, acrobatic mate has worked out how to get under the cover and right inside the feeder so that she can eat her fill in comfort. I think I have made an excellent choice of mate, don’t you?

The owner of the garden, who is so thoughtful to both us and the birds who come to this small plot, watches our antics from her kitchen window & obviously gets great pleasure from doing so. I’m sure it also pleases her to think that she is helping to keep us all well-fed, not only in the cold winter months but also during the spring and summer, when we are all trying to bring up a new generation to bring her delight in the future.

What a pity that not all humans share her joy in seeing us, and that so many think ill of us and want us gone from the British countryside.