Story: 'In the park'

The squirrel wrinkled its nose and tucked into its acorns, and for a few seconds I was entranced. It was kind of cute, and the squirrel wasn't running at all. For a few moments, here in the city park, all was well.

The serenity dipped a bit when a bush twitched and a few acorns were flung. The squirrel, all alert in an instant, streaked up a nearby tree and vanished. The flung acorns lay there untouched. I lay there, annoyed. A bearded face bobbed up, and some shoulders, but was yanked down by some flailing blonde braids. The bush stilled with great artifice and all was quiet.

The squirrel was proving elusive. He, she, or it wouldn't be back for a while if at all today. The bush dwellers, not aboriginals but urban weirdoes presumably, didn't make a move. Neither did I, not wanting to tip them off to the presence of an idle short story writer observing their strange behaviour.

Another squirrel crawled down from a tree, this one looking as if it had already eaten far too many acorns in preparation for Winter, and approached the abandoned nuts on the ground. It sniffed them suspiciously, in case the acorns turned out to be the nut equivalent of a Great White Shark, before eating more assiduously. Suddenly it stopped, cocked its head, and something ridiculous happened.

"In the year 1860, the reputation of Doctor Wybrow as a London physician reached its highest point. It was reported on good authority that he was in receipt of one of the largest incomes derived from the practice of medicine in modern times." Said the squirrel approximately, as much as it could with a sciurine jaw, before it went back to eating the acorn.

"Yes!" roared the bush, and the beard emerged again jubilantly. "Yes!" The squirrel was gone practically before the first sound had emerged from his whiskers. I didn't pay much attention as I was trying to isolate the quote. Wilkie Collins? Ah, yes, 'The Haunted Hotel'! Why was I not surprised, you might wonder? Writers aren't normal; go ask a publisher.

Blonde braids got up as well. She looked proud but annoyed. "Now we'll have to start again, you dope. How we can test the squirrel if it's in hiding? Huh?"

Bemusedly, I decided to weigh in with my own presence. "Howdy. How are you folks doing today?"

The two urban weirdoes twirled and levelled their microphones at me as if they were loaded with grapeshot and set to kill. Bearded man turned bright red, and braids scowled. "We will tell you nothing. Nothing!"

"Nothing? Not even a hint about the talking squirrel that just recited Collins in my presence? Just a teeny hint?"

"No! Never! The NSA would lock us away for decades!"

I guffawed. "Yes, sure. For what? Is this some ludicrous cold war power balance? Are we training up acorn and squirrel data storage to counter Chinese efforts to code their archives into pine cones and beavers?"

They looked at me, aghast. "Splark! Now we'll have to take you in! Who told you?" Not a word more did I get of the beared man, or indeed his partner, ever again. The NSA agent was nice though, although... No, perhaps that's another story.