Homeless in Vancouver: Up in the sky, it’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s…a squirrel!

Electricity, television, and Internet—the very lifeblood of a great city; all of this runs through the overhead power lines and fibre optic cables that crisscross Vancouver’s back alleys.

And running on these power lines and cables? That would be Vancouver’s ubiquitous brown and grey squirrels.

At this time of year our favourite fluffy-tailed rodents seem to make especially heavy use of the aerial network of wires in their frantic autumnal quest to gather and squirrel away (cough) winter provender.

Watching them on Monday (September 18), it occurred to me that although they have no idea what the electrical lines they run on are for (beyond the accidental way that they connect trees), squirrels still manage to use them in a telegraphically appropriate way.

I mean, of course, how they’re always dash-dash-dashing, as if carried along by the lightning flowing just an insulation’s thickness under their paws!