A recap from earlier today....
"Look at what I found growing on the wall of the cellar, Archdruid. What do you think they are?"
"Well, they look and smell like mushrooms, Marston. But I'd throw them away if I were you."
Based on the logic that I'm not him, Marston went off and fried said fungi with a little garlic and olive oil and had them on toast.
He now tells me that he's been appointed the "Second Prophet to the Squirrels". The First Prophet was Mother Julian, with her famous "size of a hazelnut" comment.
According to Marston, God has given up on human beings - he quoted Hardy's famous words "after 2,000 years of mass we've got as far as mustard gas". God now has a mission to the squirrels. And the Reds are his chosen race.
Marston says that the invasion of the Gray squirrels from America is a judgement on the Reds, just as the Babylonian exile was a punishment for the People of Israel. Although Marston is curiously reticent on just what iniquities can be committed by a squirrel - he thinks it may have something to do with nibbling lumps out of conkers. But just as Babylon fell to the Medes and the Persians, so the Grays are in their own turn being chastised for the iniquity of chasing out the Reds, under the thrall of the new Mutant Killer Black Squirrels.
Marston wants to preach the Good News to the Red Squirrels, telling them to turn from their iniquities and be saved. He wants to tell them there's a place where the Squirrel and the Fox will lay down together, and their winter stashes of nuts will never be lost. But he's rather stymied by his inability to learn the Squirrel language. Although he reckons that all squirrels speak the same language - as they have never attempted to build a giant drey that reaches up to heaven - the Grays and Blacks have an American accent. But lacking anyone who is bilingual in English and Squirrel, he's in for a long haul here.
I hope the effect of the mushrooms wears off soon. But not too soon. He's currently coming in really handy for retrieving all the footballs and kites we've got stuck in the trees over the last few summer picnics. And I'm hoping he may be able to nip up a drainpipe and clear out the guttering for us.
Those greasy greys do commit no end of iniquity in this domain. They do sneak through the catflap and purloin the very loaves from our kitchen, so they do.
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