Siesta

Tony and I took a little time off last week to go to Pow Hill. We'd never been there before but it's near the Derwent Reservoir, not far from Blanchland just about on the borders of Northumberland and Durham. More to the point, it's a nature reserve. We had been tipped off that's a good place for seeing red squirrels, and I haven't seen any for a while, so off we went after lunch. We found a happy little woodland beside flat calm water, and the first creature we spotted was an affable Geordie bloke with a camera the size of a telescope. We asked him how he was doing, and he reckoned there was plenty of bird life about. But, he told us, two o'clock in the afternoon wasn't a good time for squirrels.

In the past I've met squirrels who were bright eyed and bushy tailed at pretty much any time of day, but the Pow Hill squirrels must like their siesta, because at two o'clock they all scurry back to their dreys for a zzzz. How do they know it's two o'clock? Do they squint up at the sky and work it out, or strain their tufty ears for the chimes of Blanchland church, or do they just check their phones? (Not the older squirrels, of course. They have proper wind-up watches on gold chains.) I suppose their body clocks tell them that any squirrel who has been stuffing its face since five o'clock in the morning absolutely needs to lie down before it explodes. Yes, apparently five o'clock in the morning is a very good time to see them. I don't do mornings, but those little sweeties are worth getting out of bed for. One of these days I might turn up at Pow Hill in the wee small hours. I might even be conscious.

I asked the Mistmantle squirrels what they thought about this afternoon sleep thing. Most of them said it was a silly idea. Crackle, who was grinding nuts to make frangipane, said rather sharply that chance would be a fine thing, but then Scatter came and helped her and they giggled together a lot. Apple said that Filbert always likes to rest his eyes in the afternoon, and Tay muttered that anything that made squirrels shut up for an hour or two must be a good idea, but Tay's always muttering to herself these days. I tried to ask Urchin, but he was at the top of a tree and didn't hear me. I asked Princess Almondflower if she thought she should go to sleep in the afternoons, and at last sight she was still rolling around laughing so much she had to bite her own tail to make herself stop. Squirrels!