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10-15-2010, 01:09 AM | #1 |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: Dec 2004
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The Black Squirrel of Mirkwood.
Apparently this animal is on the rise in The South and East of England. It was first sited in England around 1912. When Anborn first mentions them, I thought them to be another Tolkien creation (I was 11 at the time). I'd never seen or heard talk of them. They now seem to growing in population again, ironically around the same area that the Grey was introduced into England around the 1870's. So keep your eyes peeled, one day you may well be closer to Eryn Lasgalen than you think.
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10-18-2010, 07:14 PM | #2 |
Laconic Loreman
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My alma-mater's unofficial mascot is the Black Squirrel. Story goes, a guy from the university seeking to run wild-life tests on black squirrels and the environment, went into Canada and brought back 10 of the black squirrels to Kent State, here in Ohio.
Long story short, they've taken over and exerted their dominance among the indigenous squirrels. They're all over my part of Ohio now. We even have an Annual Black Squirrel Festival for them...it's kind of weird. The part of Wiki about the black squirrels driving out the native squirrels in Kent, is no joke. All the students who go there can tell you stories of the wars between the black and underground rebel grey squirrels.
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Fenris Penguin
Last edited by Boromir88; 10-18-2010 at 07:22 PM. |
10-19-2010, 09:09 AM | #3 |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
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They are having the same effect here in England, however I don't feel sorry for the Grey, it has done enormous damage to the Red.
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10-19-2010, 01:51 PM | #4 |
Curmudgeonly Wordwraith
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What a racially squirrelophobic thread this is!
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And your little sister's immaculate virginity wings away on the bony shoulders of a young horse named George who stole surreptitiously into her geography revision. |
10-19-2010, 01:52 PM | #5 |
Shady She-Penguin
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Like the stars chase the sun, over the glowing hill I will conquer Blood is running deep, some things never sleep Double Fenris
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10-20-2010, 08:18 AM | #6 | ||
Wisest of the Noldor
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"Even Nerwen wasn't evil in the beginning." –Elmo. |
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10-20-2010, 02:18 PM | #7 | |
Blossom of Dwimordene
Join Date: Oct 2010
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I live in the iddle of Toronto city, and black squirrels are more dominant then the grey ones here as well. I don't think that forests have to do a lot with it. Also, red sqierrels have been dominant in quite a few places, including western Europe, a couple of decades ago. Red doesn't really fit for camouflage, so there has to be soething else. P.S.: isn't this site supposed to be about Tolkien and not about the squirrel demographics? |
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10-20-2010, 07:40 PM | #8 | ||
Wisest of the Noldor
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Also... you're not suggesting we're about to be visited by the chat... you-know-what? How meta.
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"Even Nerwen wasn't evil in the beginning." –Elmo. |
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10-21-2010, 02:24 AM | #9 |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
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I wonder what exposure Tolkien had to the Black Squirrel in his youth, as it was predominately in the South and East of England, was it anywhere else?
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10-21-2010, 03:17 AM | #10 |
Cryptic Aura
Join Date: May 2002
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I am so happy to hear that I cannot be held accountable for inadvertently transporting a black in my luggage and releasing it in the UK.
Black squirrels, like crows, have a bad rep in Lotr. We know that Tolkien had a fear of spiders from an early childhood incident in South Africa. Perhaps that mill in Sarehole harboured black squirrels?
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10-21-2010, 04:38 AM | #11 |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
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I don't think Tolkien include anything in his works without knowing what he was talking about. The Black Squirrel caused quite a fuss when it was first seen in 1912, the young 20yr old Tolkien would surely have heard of it. By the 1940's it had spread to the Cambridgeshire/Hertfordshire border, the wandering Tolkien may have seen it on his travels?
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[B]THE LORD OF THE GRINS:THE ONE PARODY....A PARODY BETTER THAN THE RINGS OF POWER. |
10-21-2010, 05:20 AM | #12 | |
Blossom of Dwimordene
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[/QUOTE]Also... you're not suggesting we're about to be visited by the chat... you-know-what? How meta.[/QUOTE] I really don't get what you're talking about. If you mean that I've reported this thread, then no, I didn't. I don't even know how to do this yet.
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You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera |
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10-21-2010, 07:16 AM | #13 |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
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It is about Tolkien, and where he got the idea of Black Squirrels to populate Mirkwood with, why not Black Rabbits or Black Foxes. It is to with Anborn and his desciption of Gollum, who scales trees and walls like a squirrel.
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[B]THE LORD OF THE GRINS:THE ONE PARODY....A PARODY BETTER THAN THE RINGS OF POWER. |
10-21-2010, 07:45 AM | #14 | ||
Wisest of the Noldor
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"Even Nerwen wasn't evil in the beginning." –Elmo. |
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10-21-2010, 10:10 AM | #15 | |
Princess of Skwerlz
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Two thoughts I'd like to share:
1. Tolkien needn't have seen or even known of real black squirrels to write about them - this is fantasy, remember, and the forest that went dark would naturally have animals that went dark as well. Weren't there black butterflies too? Yes, I just looked Mirkwood up in the Hobbit, and Tolkien describes Quote:
2. The "skwerlz" are various warning pictures that I have used when necessary to remind posters of proper forum behaviour. Since members have been quite good about staying on topic for the most part, I haven't needed any recently. Here they are, just for your enjoyment:
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'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth...' |
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10-21-2010, 10:11 AM | #16 |
Princess of Skwerlz
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...and here are the rest:
These delightful images were created by The Barrow-Wight Himself.
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'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth...' |
10-21-2010, 12:20 PM | #17 |
Wight of the Old Forest
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ad 1. Oh, but there actually are black butterflies; see e.g. here. No idea though whether any of these occurred in Britain in Tolkien's lifetime.
ad 2. Oh yes, the Green Squirrel, fiercest of all variants, feared by the forces of darkness. When Mirkwood was cleansed after the War of the Ring and became Eryn Lasgalen again, it repopulated its ancient haunts in the forest and drove the Black ones out, scattering them all over the rest of Middle-earth... or so the rumour goes.
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10-21-2010, 02:29 PM | #18 | ||
Banshee of Camelot
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Yes! "wish-fulfilment dreams" we spin to cheat our timid hearts, and ugly Fact defeat! |
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10-23-2010, 08:50 AM | #19 |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: Oct 2008
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Squirrel recipe
In The Guardian newspaper of Sunday, 11th May 2008, there's a squirrel recipe:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandsty...s.foodanddrink Admittedly, these are grey squirrels, which one commentator said taste like wild boar. |
10-23-2010, 09:06 AM | #20 | |||
Cryptic Aura
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I’ll sing his roots off. I’ll sing a wind up and blow leaf and branch away. |
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