Little Reds

It's a while now since I last saw a red squirrel and they are just the loveliest animal in the world. I need to go to Scotland again. The Sunshines were there last week, in Perthshire, and called in to see us on their way home.

"Did you say many critters?" I asked.

"Lots!" said LYS. They'd seen six red squirrels, busily running up trees and across the forest floor, putting away nice scrummy nuts for the winter. Lady Sunshine has observed that the squirrels near the Loch of the Lowes, which has a bird hide and is very animal friendly, fatten up more quickly than the others. She suspects there are squirrels so overloaded that they go into nut coma and drop out of their trees.

They do sometimes shut their eyes while eating, as if they are just transported with joy. Or maybe it's because they know they're being watched, so they shut their eyes because 'If I can't see you, you can't see me.' Lady Sunshine's favourite squirrel of the week was one with a creamy tail, and they saw another when they were driving home. It was running by the side of the road, so they beeped to explain to it that it was in the wrong place. There used to be a road safety programme for children called 'The Tufty Club', based on a little red squirrel. This one wasn't listening.

When I wrote FAWN I wrote it about fallow deer, which are the commonest in England. In Perthshire they saw fallow, roe and red deer. They needed a road safety talk, too.

"There were three of them," explained LOS. "The one in front stopped, looked along the road, saw the traffic, and said 'Good! Follow me!' It could have turned a bit nasty. But fortunately no deer were injured in this incident. Neither were the Sunshines, I'm glad to say.