In the early 1990s, the New Zealand Embassy in Bangkok was at the end of a lane shared with the Spanish Embassy, nestled under tall, leafy green trees. Sadly those trees are all gone now, replaced with concrete and steel high-rise buildings, but when I was there it was a kinder, gentler time, though even then we knew it wouldn’t last long. My office was on the second floor, and it looked out into the trees. I could sit at my desk and watch squirrels scampering along the branches, desperately madly chasing each other, and occasionally stopping to copulate. It was a little piece of nature in a city that was fast becoming a building site, cranes stretching across the horizon, in the midst of an economic boom; a city that was fast developing but at the same time – in a process replicated all over the world – sadly losing some of its more beautiful spots in the name of progress. My little spot of nature had squirrels, and I was amazed. Who’d have thought there’d be squirrels in Thailand? Certainly not me, who only knew squirrels from books and TV. I loved them. The squirrels in Bangkok though were lean. They weren’t the squirrels from the cartoons I grew up with, cute chubby little cheeks and bodies and brush-like fluffy tails, but they were squirrels nonetheless, real live squirrels in-the-flesh, and forever entertaining.
In the middle of our term in Thailand, we were given two weeks additional leave, to ensure we had a break from the temperatures, humidity and environment of Bangkok. We took the opportunity to go to Europe for the first time. There, in the grounds of the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, we saw a squirrel. This first European one was much more like the chubby cartoon version, and we were entranced, as I have been since to see squirrels dashing about the grounds of the White House, or many years later in London, as I caught up with friends from those diplomatic days in Bangkok sipping tea together in Russell Square watching the squirrels hard at work preparing for winter, or most recently, posing perfectly for us here, in St James Park in London.
I didn’t know NZ didn’t have squirrels. You are welcome to mine. All of them.
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Fascinating creatures. I have two species who eat all my bird seed. Still, I don’t invest in squirrelproof feeders. Everybody’s got to eat! I should try to get a photo for you in some of their most amusing positions.
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I spent a goodly portion of my time walking my dog, trying to prevent him from chasing squirrels. he is so utterly cliche in his disdain for them. I never think about parts of the world existing where there aren’t squirrels!
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You are welcome to ours as well. The rascals love to tap dance on my roof, just above our bedroom, at ungodly hours of the morning. :p
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So funny — I never gave much thought it where squirrels are or aren’t. They are EVERYWHERE here. It would be hard to go a day without seeing 20+ At any given moment, I can walk outside and see a squirrel. But you’re right; in travelling there have been places where the squirrels have been absent or scarce.
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