Yes, I know, it's been a while.
More than a while.
What can I say... I've lacked inspiration.
That was until the distant one sent me something to make me smile, a story featured at the BBC.
I can, of course, take no credit for this short story, other than that I created a prompt and guided the mysteries of our AI overlords. Not that they have any intelligence, artificial or otherwise, nor will they be taking my job anytime soon, trust me, I've seen the awful results that they produce.
But still, get comfortable dear reader, here it is, it made me chuckle!
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The Tale of Mr. & Mrs. Squirrel Nutkins and the Drain-Side Dwelling
On the edge of a very respectable Hertfordshire lane, not far from the hedgerow where the blackberries droop and the primroses peep, there stood a perfectly ordinary roadside drain.
At least, it had been perfectly ordinary until Mr. and Mrs. Squirrel Nutkins arrived.
Mr. Nutkins, a sprightly young red squirrel with an extravagant tail and even more extravagant ideas, had recently married the charming and practical Miss Hazel Birchwood—now Mrs. Nutkins—whose whiskers twitched whenever she suspected mischief.
They were very much in love. They were also, it must be said, terrible kleptomaniacs.
A Most Unexpected Home
One fine April morning, Mr. Nutkins declared:
“My dearest Hazel, what we need is a home of convenience—dry, hidden, and close to all the best scraps.”
Mrs. Nutkins, who had been eying a hollow in an ash tree, had some reservations. But newlyweds are prone to compromise, and before long the couple were trotting down the verge with a bundle of moss and a very old sock between them.
To her astonishment, Mr. Nutkins stopped at the metal grating of a roadside drain.
“Here we are!” he chirped.
“A perfect townhouse! Look—built-in ventilation!”
And so, the Nutkins set up house in the drain.
A Growing Hoard
Now, squirrels are fond of treasures, but Mr. and Mrs. Nutkins were most fond of treasures that were not theirs.
Within a week, the drain contained:
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One pair of trousers (very muddy, size enormous)
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Half a trampoline mat (folded tightly and stuffed like a sofa cushion)
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Three bottle caps
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A respectable collection of shiny washers
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A child’s sparkly hairclip
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And, for reasons even they could not explain, an antique brass hand grenade (which they treated with great reverence and used as a footstool)
Mrs. Nutkins would sigh.
“My love, we cannot keep every curious thing you find.”
“But Hazel, dearest,” Mr. Nutkins insisted, “they follow me home. I simply try to be polite.”
The Rumbling of Authority
Their activities did not go unnoticed.
One morning, the council’s Drain Inspection Officer—Mr. Puddlewick, a man who took great pride in his clipboard—peered into the drain and gasped so sharply that his moustache twitched sideways.
“Good heavens! Is that… hosiery?”
He returned the next day with a camera. On the third day he brought reinforcements.
Soon there were murmurs throughout the hedgerows:
“The humans are coming,” whispered a vole.
“Something about trousers and a device from the war,” muttered a crow.
“I told him,” Mrs. Nutkins fretted, “I told him not to bring home that terrible brass thing!”
Eviction Day
The council arrived with great pomp, two vans, and an air of determined tidiness.
Mr. Puddlewick addressed the drain:
“Occupants of illicit drain-based residence, kindly vacate at once.”
Inside, Mr. Nutkins bristled.
“We are respectable woodland folk! We have a footstool!”
But Mrs. Nutkins tugged his tail.
“Nutley dear, they have high-visibility jackets. We cannot win.”
With dignity (and several small stolen items stuffed hastily into their cheek pouches), the Nutkins scurried out just as the council officers extracted the trampoline, the trousers, and the venerable hand grenade.
A polite sign soon appeared:
“NO SQUIRRELS. NO HOARDING. DRAIN TO REMAIN CLEAR.”
A Fresh Start
That evening, the couple found the ash-tree hollow Mrs. Nutkins had preferred all along.
They arranged bits of moss and twigs into a tidy nest. Mr. Nutkins hung up the sparkly hairclip “as art.” Mrs. Nutkins pretended not to mind.
“Perhaps,” she said gently, “we could adopt a rule: no objects larger than your head?”
Mr. Nutkins pondered this.
“Not even trousers?”“Not even trousers.”
He agreed—mostly because he had already spotted a very small teaspoon gleaming temptingly in the grass.
And so, Mr. & Mrs. Squirrel Nutkins lived happily, if not entirely honestly, ever after—far from drains, close to the treetops, and only occasionally in possession of other people’s belongings.
