‘Eejit’ squirrels and nature’s nutty facts
Tufty doesn’t hibernate and male robins are thugs: book sets the record straight about wildlife myths
NATURE has no time for ‘eejit’ squirrels and robin redbreasts have no place on Christmas cards, says RTÉ nature broadcaster Éanna Ní Lamhna in a new take on Irish wildlife.
Her new book, Wonders Of The Wild, focuses on the ‘Irish wildlife that we were all told the wrong things about’, as well as things going on around us that we’ve probably missed.
‘It’s little quirky, interesting things that people would be interested in, rather than just a general wildlife book,’ Ms Ní Lamhna told the Irish Mail on Sunday this week.
The book, vividly illustrated by Brian Fitzgerald, offers a chance to correct some misconceptions about nature that have been irking the biologist, such as believing that Tufty the Squirrel goes to sleep for the winter.
‘We were all told growing up that
‘Here’s the wonderful world we live in ’
squirrels hibernate. Squirrels don’t hibernate. Why would they be gathering nuts in the autumn if they’re going to be asleep for six months? That would be quite mad.
‘Telling people about squirrels hibernating and waking up and forgetting where they put their nuts… If a squirrel forgets where they put their nuts, they die of hunger. Nature doesn’t tolerate eejits.’
Ms Ní Lamhna, from Stabannon, Co. Louth, said it is ‘adults that have it all wrong and they’re the ones that are telling the wrong things to their kids’.
So, while the book is written for eight- to 12-year-olds, ‘adults reading it to their children will learn lots of new things as well’.
Like the fact that there is ‘absolutely no difference’ between a female and a male robin.
‘That’s all grand, but what if it’s a female and the stupid eejit [male] doesn’t recognise the female? This could have a terrible ending altogether.’
Males will ‘fight to the death’, Ms Ní Lamhna explained, while the female ‘doesn’t square up and doesn’t fight with him. But it’s curious: the male robin doesn’t recognise the love of his life, because she looks exactly the same as he does.’
The Yuletide feathered friend is ‘the most belligerent and fighty creature you ever saw’, the Mooney Goes Wild presenter said.
‘What they’re doing on Christmas cards I do not know because they’re not birds of peace at all.’
A spread in the book called Slow Coaches details the animals that never made it to Ireland.
‘The snakes got as far as Britain, the moles got as far as Britain, but by the time they were about to go across the Irish Sea, it had formed [after the Ice Age] and they couldn’t go to Ireland,’ Ms Ní Lamhna explained.
The former president of An Taisce said little children are ‘very interested in nature – they’re interested in worms and they’re interested in birds and they’re interested in flies and they’re interested in everything. It’s the grown-ups that say “Leave that alone… that’s dirty… don’t be touching that.”’
Acknowledging ‘much more pressure on the world in which we live’, Ms Ní Lamhna remains an optimist, saying it ‘doesn’t mean that we all have to lie down and die and say it’s all dead now, we can’t do anything about it. That’s no way to go on.
‘Rather than cursing the darkness, this book is lighting the candle and saying, “Here’s the wonderful world we live in.”’