It Sucks To Be Me #4: Oh Nuts (Survival)

Hurrah, we're at the "Squirrel" edition - the last Survival book to be penned by Roger Tabor and, if you ask me, the point at which the series reached perfection. If I were to pick just one edition of Survival for the purposes of enticing somebody with no prior familiarity with the series, I would unquestionably give them "Squirrel". "Deer" and "Fox" feel like they were still getting the hang of the format, "Otter" is a mite too bleak and upsetting, but "Squirrel" really nails that balance between creeping paranoia punctuated by regular bursts of nail-biting tension and good clean role-playing fun. I'll confess that of the six animals you get to play as in Survival, the squirrel happens to be my personal favourite, but lest you're thinking that bias might have coloured my judgement, that was, honestly, just as likely to have worked against it - I wasn't exactly relishing the prospect of encountering those Grey Screens of Death and the little lifeless squirrel bodies that accompany them. The puzzles in "Squirrel" are simply very well-constructed, evoking even greater suspense than those of any other Survival volume; in most cases, I had a strong inkling as to what the answer would be, but there was often a nagging sense of doubt that kept me from wanting to fully commit. "Squirrel" might also be the most punishing edition of Survival - whereas in "Fox" you could potentially wander around for pages without running into danger, here all three opening scenarios lead you directly into hazards that can kill you straight out the gate if you fail to assess the situation wisely (although one of them is somewhat nicer than the others, in giving you a chance to course correct if you get it wrong).

"Squirrel" offers a very different perspective to the previous three editions of Survival, in which you played relatively big animals, and there wasn't a whole lot that was going to kill you besides humans and the knock-on effects of human activity. From this point onward we begin our descent rapidly down the food chain - our player animals are only going to get smaller, and we'll find ourselves on the menu for an increasing variety of critters, giving us all the more incentive to watch our backs wherever we go. In "Squirrel", we get an even split between deaths at the hands (as it were) of natural predators and man-made peril. Note that, unlike "Otter", where most of the deaths were gruesome accidents, in "Squirrel" all of the human-engineered demises were quite deliberate - with at least one, there's ambiguity as to whether you were the intended target, but all of these humans set out to kill.

The hero of "Squirrel" is specifically a red squirrel - a species that, much like the Eurasian otter, saw significant declines in England and Wales throughout the 20th century. This is largely on account of competition from the eastern grey squirrel, a native of North America introduced to Britain in the Victorian era that went on to widely displace it. I would presume that "Squirrel" is intended to take place in Scotland, where red squirrel population still retains a few footholds (and this is supported by one of the predators you encounter likewise being largely absent from the rest of the UK). Curiously, the impact of the grey never comes up in "Squirrel", perhaps due to the geographical specificity of the problem; unlike the otter, which was dying out all over Europe, on a worldwide scale the red squirrel is classed as a Least Concern species, so extensive focus on this particular threat might have impeded the book's ability to transfer to overseas markets. I should note that I am working with the US publication of "Squirrel", so I don't know if Tabor's notes in the UK edition included any reference to the greys; they are, however, completely absent from this jaunt around the forest.

Despite the species' precarious position in the British Isles, "Squirrel" doesn't carry so pronounced an environmentalist undercurrent as "Otter" - we obviously do learn something about the impact of human activity on squirrels, but the undercurrent I detect seems geared more toward starting a conversation with young readers about the perils of accepting treats from strangers. In "Squirrel" there is a small running theme in which the apparent generosity of man is revealed to have sinister consequences.

 

To dig up what hidden horrors lie buried in the ostensibly tranquil forest ambience of "Squirrel", click below. If you wish to remain unspoiled, keep moving.
 

 

"Squirrel" follows the example of "Otter" and gives us six potential demises:

 

• Death #1 (3) - Death by marten: On the surface, the marten stand-off seems an incredibly stressful one to be faced with straight off the bat. You're minding your own business at the top of a tree, then all of a sudden there's a ravenous marten heading straight up the trunk toward you. Either you can leap into an adjacent tree and make a run for it, or you can throw yourself at the mercy of gravity and plummet all the way down to the ground - not a massively tempting prospect, but I had an inkling that it probably was the correct choice. If you jump into the next tree, what's to stop the marten from simply following you? Martens are efficient squirrel predators, so a little arboreal gymnastics is unlikely to daunt them. On paper, leaping directly to the ground sounds like suicide, but it would be an effective way of putting distance between yourself and the marten fast. This is a case of Survival favouring you for showing extreme moxie, as opposed to erring on the side of caution. All the same, the marten encounter transpires to be the least punishing of the three opening scenarios; if you get it wrong, and go for that second tree, you will get another opportunity to escape. In the end, the marten will only kill you if you do the one thing that flagrantly underestimates it, which is to run out to the end of a branch in the hopes that the marten won't follow you that far (spoiler: it will). If you had the guts to take that death-defying leap when the marten first attacked, then the score system (to which I rarely pay much attention) rewards you handsomely, with a whopping 12 points.
  
• Death #2 (5) - Death by goshawk: Firstly, the look on the squirrel's face during the goshawk attack is absolutely priceless, perfectly mirroring my own on being landed with this horrifying scenario straight out of the gate on my first playthrough. Coward that I am, I just said "no" and retreated back to page 1 to pick a different path. I discovered that all three possible starting points are fairly brutal, but the goshawk is by and far the most fiendish of them all. You only get two choices, it's not altogether obvious which is the right one and, unlike the marten stand-off, if you get it wrong, you don't get a second chance to rectify your decision; you're goshawk chow then and there. The choice in question is between jumping into a nearby clump of trees for cover or attempting to evade the hawk by scrambling to the opposite side of the trunk you're already on. The only hint is that the latter seems like kind of an odd strategy, which means it's probably the correct one - if you chose to leap into the clump of trees, you fell short and the hawk caught up with you while you were struggling through the snow. The point here is to teach you that squirrels are much more adept at moving through the trees than they are on the ground, although this would be the only instance in which your jumping ability lets you down - ordinarily, when Tabor asks, "Can you make it?" (as he does during the marten attack), he's urging you to take the risk. In this case he's leading you on. I guess not even Tabor is to be trusted all of the time.
  
• Death #3 (11) - Death by shotgun pellets: This is a fine example of a Survival visual puzzle at its most beguiling - the solution can be figured out with relative ease, yet there is a subtle elegance in how it's put together. Tabor's narration is all about the potential food sources around you; he doesn't acknowledge the danger standing right there in plain view, in the form of a man with a shotgun. The objective, of course, is to avoid making yourself visible to him, but Tabor leaves you to suss that out yourself - should you proceed with the challenge, then you have the option of going to the top of a bare birch tree to strip tender bark, or heading for a pine tree to eat pine cones. I was 99.9% sure that if I went to the top of the birch tree I'd be leaving myself way too exposed...but what put me off going straight to that pine tree, which has ample cover, was the fact that the man was actually looking in that direction. Ugh, how stressful. For a while I took the third option, and opted out altogether. I later discovered that the man takes a shot at you whichever tree you go for, but with the pine tree he can't get a clear view and misses. With the birch tree, you're hit with a full blast of pellets.
  
• Death #4 (14) - Death by not bewaring the hand of man: As per Tabor's commentary, you're wandering through the forest when "you come across something deliciously sweet on the ground. There's a whole trail of it too." Right, doesn't sound suspicious at all. No surprises that following this trail will lead you directly into a trap - although, gazing at the illustration, I was a mite confused as to where exactly the trap is meant to begin. If you look, there is a small gap in the foliage revealing the the steel bars of a cage...but before you even get that far, I'm pretty sure the exact direction where the arrows are pointing takes you straight into an ominous set of metal jaws. Anybody else see it? Whatever the frick is in those bushes, you'll want to avoid it. Don't take candy from strangers, kids.
  
• Death #5 (20) - Death by stoat: Tabor's text identifies this plucky little assailant as a weasel, but I think it's actually a stoat, because the black tip on its tail (weaselly identified or stoatally different?). Again, I am working from the US version, and I believe that stoats are commonly called short-tailed weasels in the US, so maybe this was a state side edit (anyone with the UK publication want to confirm)? The stoat stalking you on Page 8 is probably the best of the series' hidden enemies, after the man with the shotgun in "Otter" (I'm still cheesed off at him); it's pretty well-concealed in the forest shrubbery and not immediately obvious, the black tipped-tail sticking out being the critical detail that gave it away to me. As a bonus, the stoat is the only Survival enemy (besides the dog in "Fox") who'll go after you even if you don't go directly to it; if you choose to linger and eat fungi, the stoat sneaks up behind you, but gives itself away and you escape. The book then packs you off to Page 10, where the marten is lurking. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, eh?
  
• Death #6 (22) - Death by not bewaring the hand of man (reprise): This one isn't a visual puzzle, but rather a test of whether or not you can keep your morbid curiosities in check. You come across a scattering of strange but delicious-smelling grains on the ground; is your natural impulse to put them in your mouth or to pass them by? If the former, then bad news - you just ate a huge pile of poisoned bait. Candy from strangers, kids.

 

Other observations: 

• It is possible to go round in an infinite loop in "Squirrel". If you find yourself on page 7, avoid the trail and instead chase the rival squirrel to 4. You'll then get sent to page 15, from where you can go onto the watering hole at 9 (avoid the poisoned bait), and then onto the bird table at 17 (there's a cat on the prowl, but don't worry, he's just there for atmosphere). From there you can go back to 7 and repeat the cycle as many times as you please.