A scurry of squirrels

While they're a joy to watch, their antics turn troublesome in autumn.

Our garden is infested with three-stripped Indian palm squirrels. These quick-footed, grizzled-back, furry rodents with bushy tails flash in the branches of the trees in search of ripe fruits. They are so pretty to look at that I never tire of pursuing them with my eyes.

These busy and fairly vocal creatures produce a screeching noise when danger arrives. Snakes and cats are their chief predators. Their incessant screeching sound of “chip, chip chip…” with their bushy tails touching their heads alerts the inmates of the house, especially about the gliding
of snakes, including some venomous ones on the branches of the trees and on the ground.

All is well. But the squirrels turn extremely pernicious when autumn sets in. It is the mating season when they become proactive. They chase each other, producing mating calls.

To rear their pups, who are born blind and naked, they also collect materials to build comfortable nests. Then an unequal scuffle between the squirrels and all the members of our family except my little niece breaks out as the rodents are determined to collect their nest materials, including coconut coir, cotton, jute, and cloth. They source these from useful household materials, including doormats, quilts, pillows, mattresses, and clothes (most preferably my father’s dhotis), jute rope looped in the pulley for drawing water from the well, and so on. They, with their acrobatic skills and presence of mind, escape from any critical situation and are so chivalric that they take on various challenges thrown down by the members of the house and emerge victorious every time.

The rodents prefer jute ropes to any other material. They cut the rope into pieces with their sharp teeth and fluff them into a bundle of woolly substance with their front legs at incredible speed. A scurry of scampering buns will just take a few days to reduce a 50-foot-long jute rope to five feet. Then they stack the fluffy jute wool into the hollow of the trees, or in the ventilator sills, or under the dressing table and the almirah, or into the empty shoeboxes—anywhere, in fact—to build their nests. We replaced the jute rope on the pulley with a plastic one. But they are so tenacious that they accomplish their mission by even scrolling on the wall if the jute rope is coiled and hung on a hook high above.

Needless to say, we were utterly vanquished by the prowess of these little animals. Some of our good neighbours suggested we poison or trap them. But killing them was not at all an option. Then we thought differently.

Now, we do not cast away the spoilt jute ropes after use. We keep them in a box only to cut them into small pieces and scatter them on the ground of our garden during autumn. Actually, we believe in peaceful co-existence.