Could It Be A Sign?
Chris and his long-suffering wife are looking for a portent
Regular readers may remember that when we first adopted our pet rabbit Ted, we were told in the pet store that, “rabbits are more intelligent than dogs”. Considering Ted has since proved to be a creature even more stupid than me, I very much doubted the truth of that. When you stop and think about it, how on earth could a rabbit be more intelligent than a dog? Dogs live in warm houses, understand human words, react to commands, and can even learn to help people with disabilites. Rabbits live in holes. When they come out of the holes, they chew grass until a fox sees them.
Not quite the same level.
But, never one to be put off by the glaringly obvious, I decided to conduct an your dog’s head. How quickly does he remove it?
Answer: He doesn’t remove it. I eventually removed it half an hour later. He was asleep.
Needless to say, Ted fared so badly, he registered no intelligence score at all. Now there’s a surprise.
On the subject of small furry creatures with big front teeth, I saw my first ever red squirrel a few months ago. For those who don’t know, while red squirrels still live happily in parts of Scotland, their English cousins are now pretty scarce, mainly because their rivals, grey squirrels, have pushed them out. However, one of the places they still thrive is the
Isle of Wight – smuggling a grey squirrel onto the Isle of Wight can lead to two years’ imprisonment! On yet another
I was pointing frantically at a sign for red squirrels
pre-lockdown house-hunting trip to the island, we’d just visited a property we were unlikely to ever get, when I caught a glimpse of movement high to the right and saw the reddest-looking squirrel I’ve ever seen. I mean, I knew they were red, but not that red!
I stopped and stared, grabbing my wife Lorraine’s shoulder. The squirrel jumped down from a branch and sat, nose twitching, atop a huge road sign of, ironically, a cartoon red squirrel wearing naval uniform and holding a speed gun. Lorraine didn’t see the real squirrel, only the sign. To her I appeared to be pointing frantically at a giant cartoon squirrel while shout-whispering SQUIRREL!
Lorraine has experienced many moments like this, but this was strange even by my standards, so she stared harder and finally saw it. “What a lovely thing. It’s beautiful!” she exclaimed, and then with the impossible dream of the house still in mind, she murmured,
“Could it be a sign?”
Well, yes, technically, it was… a sign about red squirrels, but we know what she meant.
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