Predator against …?
At my home it’s hazelnuts time :). There are three hazel trees around the house and we’re picking the fruit for winter. Such abundance this year!
Alas! There’s one serious problem: someone (something) else is hoarding food for winter! A squirrel has been sneaking into our garden for some time now. Not that I care much. I like to approach her sometimes and watch her sniffing and dining. However, it is something my mother-in-law can’t bear :). Anytime she sees her, she rushes into the garden, grabs hold of one of the branches and, shaking it violently, makes a lot of seemingly threatening noise :). Unfortunately, she can only win a battle, never the war: again and again the rodent leaves for her hiding with full stomach and some supplies in her mouth.
I know it’s vicious of me, but for me (and the rest of the family, for that matter) this is sheer fun. It’s enough to knock on my mum’s window and inform her: ‘The squirrel says hello’, and she’s out there again protecting our hazelnuts against this horrible horrible predator :)
What’s more to say? Just look below and judge for yourselves how scary the predator is :)
What a fantastic story to use in a lesson with the young ones, or in fact any group. Don’t we all feel superior over all kinds of poor little creatures and mercilessly purge them from ‘our’ spaces?
Speaking of stories and wildlife. A few week ago a group of teachers was returning home at night through some woodland when an animal ran across our path. ‘What was that?’, asked half-scared Antonia, an Italian from Napoli. ‘A fox’, sombody said. It took a while before we heard her comment in genuine surprise: ‘I didn’t know foxes are that big, I thought they’re more like squirrels.’
Yeah, tell me about it! My neighbor’s dog poops all over my very own driveway. And guess what? No reaction from my neigbor.
I’d rather the dog gorged on whatever I have in my garden than defecate.
By the way, I guess I’m not the only one in my misery. I just looked up the word poop in the dictionary and this is what the corpus returned:
“Your puppy’s just pooped right outside my front door.”
Lucky me! Thank God it’s the driveway not the front door!
I know exactly what you mean. I had a pair of pigeons on my balcony in my flat in Lodz :)
By the way, to my mum’s horror and my amusement, there are two squirrels now :D