At the beginning of the year, you may recall, in homage to George Orwell’s egg-counting mania, I began a daily squirrel count. Alas, I lack the single-minded diligence necessary for so useful a pastime, and I am afraid the count petered out on, er, the second of January.

I mention this solely as a pretext to draw to your attention this squirrel.

It is said somewhere, possibly by Dobson, that every fictional hero has an antipole, an eerie opposite that features in an – almost certainly unwritten – mirror of the original work. (If it was Dobson, it is a shame he never developed this thesis into an entire pamphlet.) I think we can safely say that what we have here is the antipole of Unconscious Squirrel!, the unconscious squirrel.