The Death of Squirrel Nutkin (From Western Telegraph)

The Death of Squirrel Nutkin

6:35pm Monday 15th June 2009

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THE DEATH OF SQUIRREL NUTKIN Walking with my yellow Labrador, Freddie, this morning I could see some grey squirrels scampering at the bole of one of a grove of trees in Ty Canol ancient woodland.

I know Squirrel Nutkin was a red squirrel, having read the Beatrix Potter story so many times to my children that I can still repeat chunks of it. However, whatever anyone thinks about grey squirrels, and they do damage trees, they have all the grace, agility and beauty in their leaps that Nutkin could ever have had. So, for me, they are Squirrel Nutkin.

The grey squirrels we meet most days seem to tempt the dog to chase them. Same place, similar time and same performance. Freddie runs for the squirrels.

They wait – or so it seems – until he is almost on them and then they speed up a tree and, if we are lucky, we spot them in the foliage leaping from one slim, swaying branch to another. Their acrobatics are amazing as they land on a far branch which itself bends and then they launch again as from a trampoline.

I am able to view, most mornings, this performance of these superb and fearless little athletes. I watched a trapeze artist in Las Vegas perform “the triple”- that Holy Grail of achievement for humans who dare to defy the heights on the high trapeze. Compared to Nutkin and his troop even that amazing feat seems artificial and stiff.

Freddie,like the Las Vegas audience, is earthbound as the squirrels leap far above him. They are safe and far beyond his grip.

But not today! As one of the squirrels lands after a long, high leap the branch cracks with a sound like that of a rifle. The branch breaks, and bends toward the ground, as Nutkin clings to the end of it. The end of the branch is too thin and Nutkin slips and falls and Freddie waits below.

The squirrel lands almost on top of him and he grabs the little body, slings it in the air, and kills it as it falls again.

Only a grey squirrel perhaps. “Destructive little devils,” says a neighbour. “They eat round the trunk of my trees and the trees die. You should put Freddie up for some kind of medal.”

So that was the end of this little drama and similar deaths to all kinds of wild creatures must happen a thousand times a day in woods all over Pembrokeshire. Tomorrow we will be there again and so will the squirrels.