Mammal behaviour in winter
Perhaps inhabitants of the rest of the world accustomed to confronting weightier matters don’t know this. Or if they do they don’t pay it much heed. But Jeff and I live in a rare Twilight Zone where we never have to Spring our clocks forward or Fall our watches back.
For geo-political or scientific reasons too incredibly complex for me to fathom, we concern ourselves not at all about losing-or gaining-that so precious hour of sleep twice a year.
Now this might lead you to expect my profound analysis of sexagenarian friskiness in the time/space continuum. Whatever that on earth or elsewhere means! Or my speculative thoughts about whether we age less and frolic more by not fiddling with our timepieces.
Worry not. My head hurts already from writing about them, never mind thinking about them so I’ll leave these profound cosmic considerations to experts like Professor Stephen Hawkins or Chief Inspector Clouseau.
No, this artificial time-switching simply reminds me of how living creatures adjust to seasonal changes. Allowing me conveniently today to do something I’ve long wanted to do. Namely, to name the mammals Jeff and I would chose to be if we weren’t remotely human.
Take the humble squirrel. In 1966 we visited the U.S. State of Maine to soak-up what locals there call “The Change”: when the leaves on thousands and thousands of undulating acres of trees go through every shade of green, yellow and brown before the first snow falls.
A more spectacular landscape I never saw. And, watching squirrels scurrying feverishly gathering acorns, a farmer admitted they were the Maine dwellers best prepared for the long hard months ahead.
Then there’s the majestic Brown Bear (Ursus Arctos). Jeff and I have twice been in northern Finland in deepest midwinter, and every Finn we met said no person had ever outsmarted the bears’ winterisation programme, which is why they’ve been appointed Finland’s national animal.
And finally those cute seal pups everyone so adores. We’ve never actually seen them here in the West Indies. And you might consider it an extreme stretch of the imagination when I compare Jeff and myself to seal pups.
But whenever we frolic friskily-which is often-in the warm Caribbean Sea, and as the rest of the world adjusts clocks, we most surely could not be mistaken for squirrels stuffing cheeks with acorns or Ursus Arctos’ entering hibernation.
