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 in the park lawn and filling them with absolutely nothing. The squirrel responded at a hastily arranged press conference beneath the big oak on Thursday morning, standing on his hind legs in front of a crowd of microphones and cameras held by rabbits, blackbirds and one extremely attentive jay.

The squirrel, who kept a nut firmly in his mouth throughout, described the accusations as deeply hurtful, deeply untrue and, in his words, “the kind of thing a jay would say”. He then excused himself, dug a small hole in full view of the press, made several convincing tucking movements, patted the soil down with great ceremony and scampered off. When the jay hurried over and dug up the spot, it found nothing but damp earth. The squirrel was later seen three trees away, still holding the nut.

Neighbours say the pattern is always the same. The squirrel is especially active in late summer and early autumn, when the park is full of acorns and conkers, and he seems to put on his best performances whenever somebody is watching. A rabbit who has lived under the hedge for two years claims to have dug up eleven of his holes and found an acorn in only one of them, which the rabbit describes as “frankly insulting to the whole community”.

Asked whether he felt any remorse, the squirrel said he was simply protecting his assets in a very competitive market, and then spent forty minutes doing nothing on a branch while everyone waited. Park officials have declined to take sides. The jay has announced that it will no longer dig up any hole it has watched being filled, and has been seen staring very hard at a squirrel, a hole and a nut, trying to work out which one to trust.

The joke is built on something grey squirrels really do. According to National Wildlife magazine, the biologist Michael Steele of Wilkes University in Pennsylvania has described how a grey squirrel may hold a nut in its teeth, dig a hole in the ground and vigorously cover it up again, all without putting the nut in the hole. The behaviour is known as deceptive caching, and it may help protect a squirrel’s food from would-be thieves who have been watching where it digs.

The same article notes that squirrels hide thousands of nuts throughout the year, particularly in late summer and early autumn, and that they may dig up and move their caches after only a few days. So the next time you watch a squirrel busily burying something in a park, look closely at its mouth as it runs away. You may be watching an honest day’s work, or you may be watching an extremely skilled performance, and the jay would very much like to know which.