Walking to Camelot Read Online Free PDF Page A

He says he has lived in the area all his life and has watched the demise of the native red squirrel — decimated, he says, by the introduction of the American grey squirrel. But the red squirrel is finally making a comeback. Government and nature groups are targeting key areas where red squirrels are still found, and trapping squirrels — killing the grey ones and releasing the red ones unharmed. (Personally, I think the grey squirrels are just as cute and someone should stand up for their rights too.) Then he complains about the American mink wreaking havoc with the aquatic life in the rivers. Mink are eating the fish and killing off ferrets, water rats, and small otters. We commiserate, then leave him to his fly casting.
    â€œKarl,” I muse, “the very first book ever read to me by my mother was
Chatterer the Red Squirrel,
by Thornton Burgess, and I have gone through life believing that Shadow the sly weasel was the Darth Vader threat from which Chatterer was always running. Now I find that it’s just a bunch of grey squirrels that have decimated Chatterer and his mates.”
    â€œDon’t lose any sleep over it. They’re all pests and varmints as far as I am concerned, and they do a hell of a lot of damage if they get into your cellar or attic.”
    The scene as we wend our way along the stream is reminiscent of Kenneth Grahame’s
The Wind in the Willows,
with badger setts, willows overhanging the brook, and abundant bracken, marsh, and hedgerow to house myriad wildlife. Here indeed lies a quiet little microcosm of rural Lincolnshire, a world unto itself. Our fisherman friend is well entitled to be protective of this natural habitat.
    Near the entrance to a copse of beeches, we discover a dead badger on the side of the path. The creature is much larger than I imagined. Its sharp, angular teeth and long, non-retractable claws are truly fearsome. This animal can do a lot of damage. Badgers are almost never seen in daylight; Grahame notes in his classic that “Badger hates society, and invitations, and dinner, and all that sort of thing.” However, badgers have a reputation for wisdom. In T.H. White’s
The Once and Future King,
the young King Arthur is turned into a badger by Merlin as part of his education. Arthur meets an old badger who tells him, “I can only teach you two things — to dig, and love your home.” The badger is also the house symbol for Hufflepuff in the Harry Potter book series.
    Ratty in
The Wind in the Willows
is in fact a water vole, a semi-aquatic rodent which has a rounder nose than a rat, a chubby face, and, unlike the rat, hair covering its tail, ears, and paws. There are believed to be some 220,000 surviving voles in the United Kingdom, and the old fisherman was right — they have been fast declining due to the American mink, a predator. In the comic novel and movie
Cold Comfort Farm,
one of the main characters, Urk, refers to his unrequited love, Elfine Starkadder, as his “little water vole.” In Evelyn Waugh’s novel
Scoop,
his hero declaims, “Feather-footed through the plashy fens passes the questing vole.” And British archaeologist David Miles opines that the vole existed in Britain some 500,000 years ago. In fact, the vole may be the longest surviving original Briton. Such adorable little creatures are therefore much maligned with the “rat” appellation.
    The English really are in love with animals. There are countless stories of macho fathers condoning the beating of their sons at boarding school yet breaking down and crying at the sight of an injured sparrow. As Sarah Lyall writes in
The Anglo Files,
“Every British animal has its cheerleaders.” And the epitome of evil in English society is someone who mistreats an innocent beast. Near London’s Hyde Park this year the government will unveil, at a cost of one million pounds, the Animals in War Memorial, to celebrate the animals who