Grey Squirrel

The stray marmalade cat had given no evidence of hunting skills, but having seen a grey squirrel with its back to him, he could not resist jumping down from the window sill and moving in the rodent’s direction. Like a child playing One, two, three red lights, as long as the squirrel appeared to be oblivious to him he sneaked up on it in all his orange obviousness, but when it seemed about to turn its head he froze. The squirrel let him come close enough to pounce before dropping the toadstool and darting up the trunk of the nearest tree.

I have to admire an animal that runs nonchalantly along a twig as high above the ground as the roof of a two-storey building, and then drops, to land unerringly on a slender twig far below. Or, that leaps across the gap between two trees unconcerned by the roar of traffic on the road below. Or, picks up fungi to eat from ground where the Deathcap grows.

Norman Hickin, author of Irish Nature, is one of the few people prepared to allow that the grey squirrel has ‘many endearing ways’. Political correctness demands that we think of it as the wicked persecutor of the lovable red squirrel. To the best of my knowledge, grey squirrels did not displace red squirrels from the trees around our house. I have never seen the latter here.

In 1988, when Graham d’Arcy was writing his Pocket Guide to the Animals of Ireland, foresters, (horror of horrors), were shooting large numbers of red squirrels as pests because they nibbled the shoots and stripped the bark of trees in conifer plantations. There they were considered to do more damage than greys.

A grey squirrel was the main suspect when, some years ago, I noticed that part of the frame of our kitchen window had been gnawed. I split a red chilli and rubbed the juice into the wood. Damage to the windows ceased.

I had two close encounters with the alien species. The first was in the garden one June, when I went to see if any strawberries had ripened. Under a net I used to protect the fruit from blackbirds, a squirrel sat on its haunches with a large juicy, but not yet red strawberry between its fore paws. On the second occasion I disturbed a squirrel as it rested on the carpet beside an open window. Both times my amazement was met with fear and the rapid disappearance of the animal.

An alien species is defined as one that has been introduced from another country and later become naturalised, but the word ‘alien’ can explode within us, like the seed capsule of Himalayan balsam. Its seeds invade our emotions with unintended meanings, so the unfortunate organism, which was originally introduced by humans, is seen as unfamiliar, disturbing, even distasteful.

We do not encourage grey squirrels, but neither do we apologise for the pleasure we take in watching the antics of this daring animal. Perhaps, again this year, when the beech trees have shed their leaves the bushy-tailed acrobat will gladden our hearts and raise our spirits.

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Cherry Pecking

There is a cherry tree by the hedge. In April, as the blackbird seduced with pure slow notes tinged with melancholy, white blossom burst from the branches.

In June we stood on the path and looked up. The cherry was marketed as a compact variety, but defied all efforts to restrain its growth and reached a height of twenty feet, or thereabouts. High above us long branches were lined with immature fruit. It was a very heavy crop.

The fruit continued to swell, and in early July I took four black plastic bags, put a few of the lower branches in each and waited. As I feared the uncovered green fruit began to disappear. More than once I passed the tree to hear a flapping of wings among the leaves and see a hen blackbird fly into the hedge.

In mid-July I removed the black bags to reveal plump, gleaming cherries the ripest of which were dark as wine. Above them the branches had been stripped of fruit. As I put the luscious fruit into a tub I heard a loud squawk from the hedge.

Biting through tight skin into juicy flesh, I reflected on how amazing it was that a single bird could consume such an enormous amount of fruit in such a short time and not suffer from belly ache. Perhaps an active substance could be isolated from the blackbird’s digestive system, patented and sold to travellers.

An observation a couple of days later caused me to abandon this idea. There were cherries lying in unexpected places distant from the tree. Perhaps the hen blackbird was not the greedy guts I imagined her to be, but a devoted mother bringing food to hungry chicks.

Earthworms, insects, seeds and berries, it is stated in Wikipedia, are the food of blackbirds. During the breeding season protein-rich animal material is the grub of preference. But, what if no earthworms can be found, as happens in areas where the New Zealand flatworm has become established? Are the young then fed mainly on fruit and seeds?

One day genetic engineering may bring us cherry-flavoured flatworms which will mate with natural-flavoured ones to produce cherry-flavoured offspring. What a treat they would be for baby blackbirds!

A Toast

Last month I stood beside a shrub that bore an enormous number of showy flowers. The base of the petals of each flower united to form a funnel of a very pale lilac colour. Into each of the five petals the funnel sent rays of pale lilac which were edged with deeper lilac. This background colour was interrupted on the topmost petal by an area of small blocks of yellow orange that had spread to touch the neighbour on either side and converged on the lip of the funnel.

From the shrub came a soft hum as bees worked one flower after another. They returned day after day, honey bees and bumble bees with pollen baskets white and bulging. By mid-July most of the flowers have withered, but the few that remain still attract insect pollinators.

And the name of the shrub? Rhododendron, the genus of plants which is mentioned on the same website as the earthworm-devouring New Zealand flatworm. Rhododendron ponticum, considered to be a forestry weed in lime-free areas and an alien invasive species, is still regarded as foreign although it was brought here as long ago as the eighteenth century.

Until recently I was under the impression that there were only a few species of rhododendron and that all lilac-flowered species were invasive. Loathe to question the experts, I watched with disbelief as the lilac-flowered rhododendrons in our garden stubbornly refused to invade and left invasion to elder, raspberry, blackberry, Veronica, ash and St John’s wort.

Yesterday I consulted the Reader’s Digest Encyclopaedia of Garden Plants and Flowers. Far from there being only a few species of rhododendron, the number exceeds 500 and includes the azaleas. Perhaps the definition of species was different in 1987.

Along with the bees I propose a toast to this attractive genus of plants, of which at least 499 species pose no threat to the countryside, or at least no threat compared to those rampantly invasive species, buildings and tarmac. Please raise your glass of nectar.