Nuts to That: Squirrel Advocates Decry Sewer
Members of the Bushy Tail League (BTL), a group that advocates for the fair treatment of squirrels, staged a protest over the weekend to call attention to what they call “serious and immediate threats to prime nut-burying areas.”
Officers from the Hamptons Police Department were on hand to control crowds and handle any disputes. According to Gil Horten, the president and spokesperson for BTL, current plans to expand sewer lines in the Hamptons threaten the “health and livelihood of local squirrel families.”
Horten addressed a crowd of about three dozen protestors on Saturday afternoon: “Our BTL experts have looked over the area where the village intends to place the new lines, and we have discovered at least three places where squirrels have carefully buried acorns to nourish themselves in the spring. I ask this: What will happen to those squirrels when they wake up from hibernation to find their stores of food destroyed because we’ve decided to run a sewer line through their pantries? Imagine the poor little things, darting here and darting there, searching in vain for these precious morsels. Is this how an affluent community treats its vulnerable, bushy-tailed friends?”
Local authorities did not comment on the protest, but they privately expressed growing misgivings about the possibility of disrupting the squirrel food supply. The protest dispersed Saturday evening without incident.