A man with a squirrel on his head

The increasing ubiquity of IT means that, like, I suspect, many of our generation, we spend a fair amount of time attempting to provide long-distance tech support by phone for older relatives baffled by the workings of an iPad or the intricacies of the internet, often because they find themselves with no alternative but to go online for some essential transaction.

By and large, they’re all pretty competent with general browsing, emails and so on, but every now and then something goes awry: the title comes from a particularly surreal recent conversation where three attempts to send a link to an embedded instruction video from a company’s website - a link we had both previously tested ourselves - elicited a baffled “But it’s a film of the weather forecast, dear” and then “All I’ve got is some people on a beach”, finally followed by “Now it’s a man with a squirrel on his head”.

Part of the problem is that the idea of proceeding by trial and error - the essence of learning to handle an iPad, phone or PC - is an alien one to a generation brought up to be careful and to avoid mistakes wherever possible; ‘click it and see what happens’ is not their natural reaction to a problem. It’s even worse for those who had experience of early computers at work many decades ago; they still suffer from the fear of failure learned in the days when a single error in input or timing could crash the whole system.

In a sane and humane world, they would be free to ignore the existence of the internet apart from its usefulness for entertainment or family and social communications. However, the increasing difficulty in carrying out day-to-day interactions with public services and businesses by any other means forces them into using it; companies and government offices alike are striving, to use the revealingly demeaning official term, to ‘drive customers online”.

It’s something I wrote about in 2017 and, since then, the pace has, if anything, accelerated, especially since Covid closed workplaces and obliged customers and clients to deal remotely with isolated workers, many of whom are still working from home nearly three years on. The telephone helplines nominally still exist but these days, if they are answered at all, there’s a strong chance of being cut off or left on hold while someone lets the dog out and no possibility of the call being passed to a supervisor or someone with better information.

It’s all well and good to put everything online and reduce telephone communication to a bare minimum to keep costs down but, in a world of online scams and cyber-crime, to rely on it to the exclusion of everything else is not only cruelly staking the least tech-savvy customers out like captive goats for scamming predators (as well as disenfranchising many with physical or visual impairments which prevent them from using the technology); it is also exposing all of us to risk, defended only by the weakest links in the security chain.

And that, of course, is before the inexplicable glitch, the solar flare or the cyber-attack which brings the whole thing crashing down; one day, firms - and government and health agencies - may have cause to regret putting all their eggs in the online basket. In the meantime, while it’s all still working, spare a thought for everyone unwillingly compelled to negotiate the mysteries of the internet and ending up with a man with a squirrel on his head.

Saturday Ruminations

Here at the Tavern, we like to think we are always up to date with the latest squirrel news. However, when two separate stories appeared this week, your humble host was occupied elsewhere and unable to post.

Fortunately Leg-Iron's new partner in crime was much quicker off the mark, citing both of them in a piece on scary animals - an inclusion with which I heartily concur. Don't be fooled by pictures of impossibly adorable babies falling out of trees; it's all part of their sinister plan to put us off our guard.

Each of us presumably has a similar rogues' gallery of animals to be regarded with deep suspicion - or is it just me? My own list, based on past experience of being besieged in a remote cottage by an implacable herd of them, would definitely include cows, so I was intrigued to hear someone on the radio this week talking about 'Cow Appreciation Day'.

This seemed a rather un-English concept, despite his exhortation to cherish and value our dairy herds, so I did some research. It turns out to be part of an advertising campaign by an American fast food outlet called - brace yourselves - Chick-fil-A (try saying it aloud in its native Southern accent to get the full impact).

I vaguely remember this from a visit to the States in the late 90s: the adverts feature cows displaying hand- (or hoof-)painted signs saying 'EAT MOR CHIKIN'. Cute, perhaps, and certainly memorable, this slogan is so important to the firm that it has to date successfully prosecuted 30 other companies for infringement - as Wikipedia has it, with no small irony, 'Chick-fil-A vigorously protects its intellectual property'.

On 'Cow Appreciation Day', it seems, customers turning up dressed as cows receive a free Chick-fil-ATM meal - though you have to be thorough; anything less than head-to-hoof costume only gets you a free 'entree'. (My source of information is an American website dedicated to bargain-hunting which invites readers to 'Mark your calendar for these upcoming freebies'; treats in the near future include 7-11's 'Free Slurpee Day', though it doesn't say whether you have to dress up for it.)

Meanwhile, back in the UK, while I can appreciate cows as a source of milk and meat and as a scenic addition to the countryside, albeit preferably at a respectful distance, I hope you will understand if I say they remain at the top of my list of 'animals that creep me out'.

The Drey of Reckoning

Julia's blog brings us, in her inimitable style, the tale of the squirrel-induced panic that engulfed a primary school recently. From the Mail:

A teacher at Chater Infants School in Watford, Hertfordshire, had to herd the youngsters back into the safety of the building after an 'unusually aggressive' grey squirrel disrupted their afternoon playtime.

It follows a week in which squirrels have been in the news rather a lot, what with causing traffic accidents in Essex...

A pensioner collided with a motorcyclist after swerving onto the wrong side of the road to avoid a squirrel.

...attempting robbery in Northern Ireland....

A red squirrel has been apprehended after going on the rampage at a jewellery shop in Ballycastle, Co Antrim. 

...and sabotaging the power supply on a grand scale in Florida...

The squirrel infiltrated the system at a TECO substation at about 9:30 a.m. and knocked out the power for about 7,000 area customers. 

...California ...

Power was knocked out for almost 2,000 residents of Silicon Valley after a squirrel was zapped by electrical equipment.

and Oklahoma...

An overly-curious squirrel is being blamed for a power outage that left 2,000 persons — including several businesses — without electricity for nearly an hour and a half on Saturday morning in Claremore.

... to say nothing of the many fires started by squirrels munching on the household electrics. Meanwhile, in Cincinnati, not content with merely chewing or stealing the wiring, they have been unscrewing bulbs from the zoo's Christmas light display:

The problem has gotten so bad that zoo officials took to spreading hot sauce on the strands as a deterrent.

Though, to be honest, the measure wasn't exactly a success:

"They kind of laughed at it. I think we felt good about it, but it didn't do much." 

The articles explain that the damage is the result of squirrels seeking material to line their winter nests or mistaking the light bulbs for oddly-coloured nuts, but what if there's more to it than that? Could it be that these little furry chaps actually have designs on humanity?

After all, the grey ones that came here have ruthlessly set about displacing the indigenous population, reducing them to skulking in isolated habitats or island locations from where, as we've seen, they occasionally venture forth to engage in a spot of breaking and entering.

In a single century, grey squirrels have colonised virtually the whole of our countryside while their relatives fill the same ecological niche almost worldwide; what if these little fluffy mammals are actually plotting world domination?

Maybe the lone playground invader was merely testing the water; staging a small skirmish to see how the enemy reacts. If they judge our capacity for resistance by what they saw at the school, their morale must now be sky-high.

After all, they already know they can disrupt traffic, take out our power supply and, for all we know, disable our phone masts at any time, especially given all that practice unscrewing light bulbs. For the chefs who extol the virtues of squirrel meat, it might not be long to payback time.

Still not convinced? Take a close look at this cute piece of anthropomorphic footage currently doing the rounds; that's not a twig the squirrel is nibbling...

;

If the premise of this seems familiar, you may already know the excellent short story 'Skirmish' by Clifford D Simak; if you don't, it can be found in sections online here, though I don't have any information on copyright.

'Wishin' and hopin' and thinkin' and prayin'...'

The 15-second clip has gone viral and there's a price on their heads; now we know why a stranger just happened to be filming when those two men kicked a squirrel over the edge of the Grand Canyon:

A Virginia resident on his first trip to the Grand Canyon started recording when he saw a squirrel approach two men, thinking they would be bitten.

I can't hep thinking there's considerable room for moral improvement on both sides of the lens here.

(For anyone who missed it, the incident was reported with unseemly relish by the Daily Mail.)

Quote of the day - squirrel edition

"You'd need one and a half squirrels for a main course; that's why we are serving it as starters." 

Full marks to the sous-chef at River Cottage Canteen, where diners with twitchy sensibilities need not apply. This was a one-off,  but there are plans to add squirrel to the menu again in the Autumn, when they will be nice and fat.

It's no more than you would expect of an establishment under the aegis of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (or, as my mother calls him, 'the bloke who eats dead owls') and, what's more, there's a sound ecological reason for doing it, these being grey interlopers rather than our native red ones.

The long-overdue investigation into what goes into burgers and ready meals shows just how detached the general population has become from the source of its meat. For those who never shop at a  butcher's, there is no apparent connection between the packaged ready-meal or takeaway and a real animal; it's something many consumers prefer to ignore completely.

This is, of course, largely a product of urban living and a sentimentalised view of the animal kingdom; I shall never forget the horrified reaction of a town-bred family friend who arrived unexpectedly one day and was offered rabbit curry for dinner (unorthodox, I know, but pies and casseroles do get boring after a while).

But I suspect that we are now seeing a generation grow up who just don't care. 'Watership Down' and the like have been largely forgotten (or dismissed as too middle-class to be allowed) - in any case, few children read much these days - and, where 1990s teenagers embraced vegetarianism along with all things green, their modern-day counterparts are more likely to say "Whatever" and tuck into a burger in front of the X-box.

Having been forced by recent news stories to consider the source of their meat, perhaps people may start to question whether it really matters that their food once had big eyes or a fluffy tail, especially if it's cheap, low-fat and sustainable into the bargain.

The newspapers have doubtless published this non-story in the hope of sparking a storm of outrage from the fluffy brigade amid accusations of  'a wildlife massacre' (it's happened before: 'Another Slice of Squirrel, Julia?'), but, taking into account the misleading meat labels and unidentifiable imported ingredients in processed food, they might just find it's the start of something new.

Another slice of squirrel, Julia?

A few weeks ago I posted on the menace of forty-pound American Lobsters invading British waters and, with selfless patriotism, the valiant JuliaM offered to deal with the interlopers by eating them.

I suggested at the time she might like to apply the same tactics to the ubiquitous grey squirrel, and it looks like other people have been having the same idea. A branch of Budgens has set the cat amongst the pigeons, so to speak, by offering squirrel meat for sale.

This has not pleased the fluffy brigade, who have described the supermarket as profiting from a ‘wildlife massacre’. According to zoologist and veggie lobbyist Juliet Gellatley:

'If this store is attempting to stand out from the crowd by selling squirrel, the only message they are giving out is that they are happy to have the blood of a beautiful wild animal on their hands for the sake of a few quid.'

Er, right.

I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but, carnivore or vegetarian, it seems a little odd to classify the relative morality of meat by the animal’s looks. Presumably venison’s right out, then –"You shot Bambi’s mother!”

Jenny Seagrove goes one better: 'It is unbelievable that our wild grey squirrels are now being killed and packaged up for sale in such high street stores.’

I’m not entirely sure why she has trouble grasping the concept. There may be no long-standing tradition of grey squirrel consumption in Britain, but that’s largely because we didn’t have them until the end of the 19th century.

Had they been here since Norman times, like the humble rabbit, perhaps Ms Seagrove would be rather less starry-eyed about the little pests, instead of railing against the injustice of it all:

'Anyone who cares about wildlife, as I do, should be appalled at Budgens for allowing this. It seems that no animal is to be spared falling victim to such companies' marketing ploys. What gruesome product will be next to grace our food aisles? Blackbird, fieldmouse or mole?'

I can’t wait to find out!

Go, Nutkin!

There's a new thrill-seeker hanging about at Alton Towers, it seems. A daredevil squirrel has been riding a newly refurbished roller-coaster to the consternation of the management. The intrepid rodent, first attracted by the packed lunches brought by workmen, has taken to riding in the cars on morning test runs and joining the volunteers trying out the ride.

Mindful of the risks involved, the management have installed the sort of high-pitched noise generator used to deter alcopop-wielding teenagers from hanging around shopping centres at night. A sonic device, in other words so the squirrel has inevitably been nicknamed 'Sonic'.

And there's something slightly disappointing when you find out that the ride is, coincidentally, the 'Sonic Spinball' and the source of the information is Alton Towers' director of sales and marketing. And the newly-refurbished ride opened to the public on Sunday.

So there you are; the sum total of the evidence for the regular rides is a single picture of a squirrel in a stationary roller-coaster car and a story from a marketing director. Is it true? You decide.