Yesterday's ravine walk was most pleasant. They often are, but it helps, during the winter months, when the temperature rises sufficiently to enable us to venture out with our two little dogs, without having to place boots on them to protect their paw pads from extreme cold.

Yesterday was just such a day. As luck would have it, the atmosphere warmed up sufficiently to allow us to venture out with them, with their coats, but no boots. The boots are useful, enabling us to stay out longer with them before their feet start to freeze up and we have to carry them for awhile, until they warm back up again. On the other hand, the boots also don't give them the grip they need to clamber up the many snow-slippery hills in the ravine, and they often require help to make the grade.

When it's relatively mild like that too, we have the pleasure of seeing more squirrels out and about, anticipating our arrival with their daily peanut treats, placed here and there along our hour-and-a-half route. Long accustomed to us, some of the squirrels run toward us to face us directly, demanding to be noticed and peanuts given them, rather than await their deposit in the usual spots.

And, on this occasion we saw Stumpy, a small black squirrel minus tail, waiting for us at the foot of the first long hill, beside the huge old pine whose crumpled trunk bark is the depository of many peanuts. Enabling us to give him the special, three-chamber peanuts we save for him as our favourite little woodland creature.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee were also there, a pair of young black squirrels who always travel together, seemingly inseparable, although we cannot distinguish one from the other, and one of them is bold enough to confront us demandingly, while the other shyly awaits being gifted, from afar.

And further along, a half-hour later in a different part of the forest, we came across Stumpette, yet another tail-deprived little black squirrel who resembles Stumpy, but whose personality is distinct from his.

Distinctions we have realized over the past three years of our acquaintance with them.