Now, we hear of Quentin Letts and his issues with squirrels:
Our seven-year-old daughter, Honor, learned about squirrels the sharp way last month. She spotted a grey squirrel in a nearby garden.Note that, despite Daddy's antipathy towards the 'vicious tree rats', he didn't think to warn her that this was a wild animal...
Honor was on her way to see her little friend, Mia, at the time and was in one of those chirrupy, hello-clouds-hello-trees sort of moods. Hello squirrel.
She bent down to stroke the thing.
It bit her. With a hiss and a swipe of claw and a baring of fang, the squirrel had a go at Honor and drew blood from her right thumb.Oh, wow! You're Father of the Year, for sure!
Cue waterworks and wailing and, thank goodness, a shattering of our child's Disneyfied notions of an anthropomorphised animal kingdom where every little furry thing has a name and a benign character.
I suppose little Honor is pretty lucky you didn't take the same 'wait and see' approach to bleach kept in lemonade bottles and unsecured electrical sockets, or she might not have reached the tender age of seven in the first place...
7 comments:
Take a wildlife tip from a country bumpkin: the key to handling grey squirrels safely, and I've done it countless times without being bitten, is to shoot them dead first.
I remember happy times with an old schoolchum, sniping tree-rats off the balcony of his bedroom with his trusty Theoben Scirocco. The RSPCA would probably scramble their Mi-24 Hind gunship these days.
Oh, and one time he nailed a fox*, right through the head. Killed it deader than last week's news. A fox is about the size of a lean Jack Russell, if a bit longer, and I have a lot of implements in my home that would take one out, the most salient one of which is me, not acting like a big poof. Tip: duct tape and cable tie a boning knife to a broom handle. Makes a lurvely lance (works on burglars, too!)
*bagged a roe deer, too. It's amazing what fauna turn up in a Surrey garden if you wait long enough.
"Honor"? What kind of a bloody stupid name is THAT then? AND he can't even fucking SPELL it correctly!
"AND he can't even fucking SPELL it correctly!"
Agreed, but then in fairness neither could Honor Blackman's parents ;-)
I don't know if it was intentional on Letts' part but it seems to me that this kid has learned a valuable lesson about wildlife: it's not tame, it's sometimes armed and it would rather be left alone. If she encounters an adder or something in the future her squirrel experience might kick in and remind her to keep her distance. My parents simply let me annoy the cat until it scratched me, after which I got a clip round the ear and told I'd got what I deserved. No, they didn't take the wait and see approach to bleach and power outlets but then there are very different levels of risk between those and a grumpy tomcat. Or Asbo The Squirrel for that matter.
I had a pet budgie like that once. It would take on dogs and win. Nobody - not even me - dared poke their fingers in the cage twice.
Then there was the hamster, LHB (little hairy bastard). He contracted a mite infestation and all his hair fell out. The vet gave me a packet of stuff, said 'Dissolve this in water, cup him in your hands and dip him in it'. I thought 'You have got to be fucking insane.' I put him in his ball for the experience. He never forgave me. I had to put a weight on the lid of his cage before I went to sleep.
My pets would have been okay if they had ever escaped. Wild animals are more fun than docile ones. The most fun of all is getting animal rights people to cuddle them.
"...the key to handling grey squirrels safely, and I've done it countless times without being bitten, is to shoot them dead first."
:D
"The RSPCA would probably scramble their Mi-24 Hind gunship these days."
Oh,undoubtedly!
"AND he can't even fucking SPELL it correctly!"
Heh! I have seen it spelt the English way, once.
"I don't know if it was intentional on Letts' part but it seems to me that this kid has learned a valuable lesson about wildlife: it's not tame, it's sometimes armed and it would rather be left alone. "
Until it wants your nuts. Little Honor is going to be a bit confused if daddy takes her to Hyde Park - a lot of the squirrels there are quite bold due to people feeding them, and will climb you looking for nuts.
"I put him in his ball for the experience."
one of the hamster activity variety, I hope? And not one of the washing machine variety? ;)
"Until it wants your nuts... a lot of the squirrels there are quite bold due to people feeding them, and will climb you looking for nuts."
Comment self censored due to overly predictable double entendre. :-D
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