Chapter 10

It was late in the nut season and nuts were scarce on the ground by this stage. Clive had been collecting nuts on and off due to the fact he was usually busy with Pixie Pod. This meant by the time the cold season would have gotten ridiculously cold, Clive's hibernation would have turned to hungernation. Pod had mentioned to Tree Topper Clive that there would be an endless supply of gloobleberry muffin should his nuts dry up but the squirrel was sceptical about the nature of the magic spells the Pixie was mixing in his muffins this weather, so he decided to resume his nut hunt.

Tree Topper Clive headed for the nuttiest part of the forest singing a song in his head which was basically the recipe for nut a la king to the tune of pixieland skies. Seeing as nut a la king was quite an intricate concoction the song was longer than 16 verses with no chorus to be heard. Clive had just reached the part of the song where you had to milk something with udders for the sauce when a harmony to his lyric began and made the music sound really quite beautiful, whatever about the theme.

When the song ended the most elegant squirrel Clive had ever seen scarpered down from a nearby oak and introduced herself to Tree Topper Clive as Irgaan and in turn Clive introduced himself as himself. Both animals had somehow strangely managed to overcome their respective habitual shyness and talk at length on squirrel type subjects, being two attractive young squirrels.

After a while it transpired that the two had spent some of their formative years playing in the same part of the forest but as everyone knows, squirrels don't start talking until they are quite mature, so that is why their names were not familiar to each other.

Tree Topper Clive said, “You have a beautiful name Irgaan, what does it mean?”

She replied softly, “It means creature of tenderness”