Squirrel Denies Staging Fake Burials

OAK STREET PARK — A local grey squirrel has denied all allegations of fraudulent burial, following three weeks of complaints from neighbours who say he has been digging holes and filling them with nothing at all.

The squirrel, reached mid-sprint on a fence rail, called the accusations deeply hurtful and then immediately buried an imaginary acorn while a jay was watching. This behaviour is real and it has a name: deceptive caching. A grey squirrel who suspects it is being observed will dig a hole, mime the entire business of tucking a nut inside, pat the soil down with great ceremony, and walk away with the actual nut still in its mouth. The audience digs. The audience finds dirt.

One squirrel may hide several thousand nuts in a single autumn, each in its own small hole, and remembers a surprising number of them by spatial memory rather than smell. The ones it forgets are not wasted; forgotten caches are one of the ways oak forests plant themselves. Roughly speaking, every squirrel is running a filing system and an accidental reforestation programme at the same time.

Asked whether he felt any remorse, the squirrel said he was simply protecting his assets in a difficult market, and then spent forty minutes doing nothing on a branch. Neighbours report that the holes continue. The jay has stopped digging.