A shadow-tail sits in a hawthorn tree and shouts at me, chuck-chuck-chuck-wheeeeze!, in a language it inherited from its Carolina kin. The grey squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis, from the Greek skia (shadow) and oura (tail), sits in the shadow of its own tip-twitching tail and for a moment in its otherwise frenetic life watches me watching it. With a ginger face and body of banded winter greys, the squirrel has materialised from leafless branches; it holds my attention and its eyes are big and black with a moonlit glint.
Carolinensis is the species name that denotes the first place in North America where Europeans “discovered” it, long before the very first were released in Cheshire in 1876; long before they were called an ecological disaster. This shadow-tail’s eyes may be telling me a very different tale. Along the southern Appalachian ridges of its far distant homeland are mysterious stone structures, some formed from rock outcrops, others entirely artificial that, according to Cherokee legend, were built by the moon-eyed people. These were pale-skinned, bearded, big-eyed, nocturnal people that the Cherokee eventually drove away to the east, where they went underground.
Cherokee folklore is full of supernatural folk, like Britain’s pixies and fairies, but the moon-eyed people were not among them; they were described as humans but physically different from Native Americans. Legend spread that the pale-skinned, bearded ones were the descendants of the Welsh prince Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd and his followers, said to have crossed the Atlantic in 10 boats in 1170. This story was later seen as propaganda to support the British claim to settle America based on shady evidence of pre-Columbian colonisation. Nevertheless, it’s an irresistible story that links the Appalachians with the hills of Wales and the Marches. As does, to its detriment, the grey squirrel. Sometimes, the consequences of our actions return to haunt us, beautifully and tragically in this case.
Chuck-chuck-chuck-wheeeeze! says the moon-eyed shadow-tail, the world is full of stories and mysteries and propagandas. There are people out to get us all, mate. The grey squirrel resumes its arboreal life as if there’s no time to lose.
