Well, OK - I’ll tell you the story if you insist, but remember, it was you that asked and its not my fault if it seems incredible.

  It came about because I run around and play in the trees in the garden regularly. I like to watch the goings on inside the box with windows where they keep the captive animals, ‘Humans’ I think they are called.

  It is a kind of zoo where we can look at them and watch them do their tricks, but they are not always there. Most of the time they are in the back - sleeping I think. Sometimes they let them out on the lawn to exercise, but they can’t escape because they can’t climb the hedge – they can’t seem to climb anything at all actually. The big ones can’t even climb a tree. Sometimes they bring in some younger, noisier ones, – which I think the keepers arrange to occupy the big ones so they don’t mope. The small ones sometimes (not often which shows you the sort of state they are in) try – and I do mean try – to climb a tree that is in their exercise compound. But really, you should see them, their efforts are pathetic. They take MINUTES to get from one branch to the next. Sometimes they even get stuck on a branch not even two leaps from the ground, would you believe? I KNOW that is incredible but I SWEAR it is TRUE. And then the stuck one makes a lot of noise and a big one has to come along and to get it down. Sometimes, they even need a “ladda” to do that and that is a thing like a portable tree with holes in it that they prop against the other tree and climb up as if their joints were seized solid with rust. NO, I am NOT lying and I just do not appreciate your implying I am inventing this. Just because YOU have not seen it yourself does not mean I am lying, does it? Do I lie to you, ever? Do I? DO I? Have I ever run off with a single nut of yours? No? Well then. Smooth your fur down. Do or don’t you want to hear the rest of this story or not, even if it is incredible? OK then.

  Sometimes they go in the big blue smelly water puddle in the garden and swim around in it – heaven knows why. They make a lot of noise when they do that, but they don’t even wash their fur. Strange. Maybe they like dirty fur? We watch them from high up in the trees when they are in the compound garden – we don’t want to frighten them because when they see us they freeze. Pathetic. We wouldn’t hurt them – you know that. We all know that. But apparently they are very frightened creatures.

  Sometimes they leave their pen, locked up in a noisy metal cage with rotating feet – it’s a kind of mobile zoo, meant to take them places without letting them escape. Only when they are safely locked up in this cage do the keepers open the gate to let the mobile zoo out, outside of the gates there are all kinds of these mobile zoos zooming around, moving the zoo animals around. We don’t know where they go but they always come back. Perhaps they go for fur cleaning, and sometimes we notice that they have less fur when they come back than when they went out, so someone must have taken some of it. Why would you want to let someone take your fur? Maybe they have no choice in the matter. Perhaps someone is farming them for their fur? What an awful life. I wouldn’t want to be them and locked up in their zoo for all the nuts in the forest. Awful. But it amuses the kids to come and look at them sometimes, and chew on a nut while we laugh at their funny antics from a quiet corner where they don’t see us.

  Anyway, as I was telling you, I was on my way up the tree that morning when I saw the people were in their cage. There was the small one with the frizzy fur on top and the larger one with half way decent flat fur like mine (but not as glossy as mine is and an awful shade of black besides). I think they are ill because they seem to have lost most of their fur and only have a little bit left on the top of their heads. The rest is just raw pink skin as far as I can see but they cover most of it with colored leaves, they are so ashamed of it (as I would be for that matter if I had lost my fur). The squirrel keepers should look after their charges better and give them better nuts to eat. It has to cost a lot to keep them boxed up like that so they really ought to look after them.

  Well, there I was, halfway up the tree and in a comfortable upside down stance, watching the animals in the glass cage without moving a muscle as I didn’t want to frighten them. Suddenly, the little one with the awful-looking frizzy fur (and not much of it either, it looks diseased to me) made a squawky noise which sounded to me like “cufydea?” Apparently this meant something to the flat fur one because it squawked back a noise which sounded like “Yesplis”. Then they started passing different shaped nut bowls back and forth, but I have no idea if that was in any way connected to their squawking to one another. They are such quaint creatures. I think their keeper de-clawed them because they always walk on the ground and can’t seem to run up a wall in the normal manner and don’t even talk about ceilings. All they can do about those is just look at them longingly. Poor things. They make these meaningless sounds all the time. Maybe one day one of our linguists can study the noises they make and see if they mean anything.

  So I watched for a bit but all they did was to keep on moving their nut bowls to their mouths. I suppose it was feeding time, they seem to feed several times a day. I think they have tooth trouble in addition to all else because you never see them take a nut in their paws and crack it with their jaws, so to get round that I think their keepers feed them nut slop in those nut box bowls they use. Sometimes they put their food on big round white leaves but even then, they have to use sort of metal twigs to get the nut slop on the plate into their mouths. So we suppose that on the one hand they must be so stiff that they can’t bend over enough to eat it off the leaves directly, and on their other hand, their feet and arms must be so diseased that they don’t always have enough strength in their paws to raise their nutslop to their mouths using their feet. It really is tragic. Sometime I think it would be kinder to put them out of their misery. What do you think? Should one keep an animal when it is so diseased and clearly suffering so much?

  Perhaps the trouble is they just can’t take living in captivity? Perhaps we should make an association to lobby for their release into their normal habitat or at least to get them acceptable living conditions- good food, get their teeth seen to, let them out occasionally, let their nails grow back, stop harvesting their fur, clean them up a bit and get them a good licking-over, and so on. I’ve got a pretty full day today so let’s talk about it later.

  I really do think this exploitation of them must be stopped though. They look quite nice creatures even if their noses are so flat and somebody seems to have cut their tails off – I assume because their tails must be worth a lot of nuts, though I have never seen one of us wearing one. Do you know what they do with the people tails they harvest?

  The more I get to know about them, the sorrier I feel for them. Can you just imagine? NEVER having a nut you can chew and a life of eating pre-chewed nut slop? I think the keepers buy it in bags, because they keep on bringing a lot of bags into the zoo and none of them ever bother to collect the nuts in the garden, so their teeth have to be rotten. Maybe those bags they bring in contain litter for them as well as other bags with food. What do you think? Just think - all that in addition to diseased fur (and even then what little they have someone harvests) and living in a cage day in day out and having your claws removed. It’s so very depressing. Cruel, I think.

  Anyway, I waited but nothing else happened. Then I saw why - I suddenly noticed frizzy fur was looking at me and when it saw me it squawked at flat fur something that sounded like “don mova mussel but thersa sqirrl in the tree”.

  I froze hard because when they make noises in this sort of situation, it often seems to be associated with the fact that they have spotted one of us. And then of course, they are so frightened of us, they just freeze like a block of ice.

  So I froze.

  But I soon saw it was no good because although Flat fur appeared not to move, I soon saw he was faking it.

  He was so scared while he seemed frozen, his eyes moved and came to rest – on me.

  That was the end of it, it was a waste of time hanging around any more so I just went on and checked out the tree

  As
usual, no nuts.

  So I just went on with my collection round as usual and left them to their awful nutslop and contemplating their miserable no-future future.

  Poor things.

  Are you SURE you have got it right about those YOU keep in cages, eh?

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