Squirrels

Overview

Squirrels are the small red nut-thieves of the forest. They take their share of the mast before the gatherers come and bury what they cannot eat, which is how a forest plants itself. The High Elf gardeners of the Crownboughs net them out of the trained nut trees; the Wood Elves of the Elderweald leave them their share as they leave the deer theirs.

Appearance

A squirrel is about the length of a forearm, half of it tail: a plume of fur as long as its body, carried curled over its back. Its coat is russet-red above, cream-white below, greyer in winter, with long tufts on the ear-tips in the cold months. Its eyes are large and dark, its hind feet long, and its claws grip bark like hooks.

It moves in bursts: a dash up a trunk in a spiral, a leap from twig to twig, a freeze, a flick of the tail. It chatters and scolds at intruders with a harsh, churring call and stamps its feet on a branch. It smells of nothing much but leaf and nut.

Habitat and Range

Squirrels live wherever there are nut trees: throughout the old forest of the Elderweald, thickest where the great nut trees stand, and in the trained canopy and garden-walks of the Crownboughs. They follow the hazel out to the forest's edge.

Behaviour and Temperament

A squirrel eats nuts above all, and also seeds, buds, fungus, and the odd egg. In autumn it buries hundreds of nuts in scattered caches and in winter finds most of them by smell; those it forgets grow. It builds a round nest of twigs and moss high in a fork. It is wary, quick, and bold by turns, and a squirrel used to a garden will take nuts from a terrace table.

Life Cycle

Squirrels breed in late winter and again in summer in a good mast year, with three or four young in the nest. Most live only a few years; martens, hawks, and owls take many.

Uses and Dangers

Squirrels give nothing much but the forest's planting, and in a poor year they cost the gatherers dearly. They strip bark from young trained trees, which harms a shaping begun generations ago, and that is why the Crownbough gardeners net them. They are harmless to people.

Lore and Belief

To the Wood Elves, what the forest lets fall is offered to every eater, and a household that takes the whole mast and leaves none for the squirrels is thought greedy. They say a squirrel that forgets its nuts is the forest's best gardener. High Elf gardeners have a saying that a squirrel can undo in a season what a house trained in a century, and use it about rival houses.

Where It Appears

• Nuts