perfidy

True story:

The next town over from me is widely considered an enclave of the wealthy. And it largely is. It's where alot of doctors, lawyers, and other well-paid professionals dwell, in addition to your business owners, small financiers, and assorted white collar folk. We're not talking, you know, robber baron wealth; there are no cottages- in the Newport sense of the word- anywhere near here. But the homes are modern, big, carefully landscaped, and seem to be raising a brood of young Audis or BMWs in their driveways.

And up until fairly recently, gray squirrels were seen regularly gamboling about the sweeping, manicured lawns in this town. Chittering and chattering, munching the occasional nut alertly, but without a sense of impending doom, clearly due to the absence of predatory creatures hereabouts. But I have noticed that they are being displaced. The numbers are not being depleted by cats, dogs, or commuters.

They are being displaced. By black squirrels.

Seriously.

Where the black squirrels go, the gray squirrels go away. We're not talking flying squirrels here, but squirrel flight. I can't help but wonder whether the black squirrels have moved on up to this fantastic, quaint town, but the grays feel the squirrely equivalent of "there goes the neighborhood".