Rolling rolling rolling...

I've actually seen animals in the wild do this trick, and they didn't need a mat between them to do it. There's a linear park at the bottom of the hill from my house, a thin strip of parkland that is about three miles long and three or four hundred yards wide. The southern end, near the town centre, is your standard English town park, with bowling greens, boating lakes and ponds, playgrounds and meadows for running around in. Follow the brook that runs its length upstream and the park gradually gets wilder and wilder until, past the miniature railway and the chalybeate spring, you reach a reservoir with a steeply banked dam leading up to it.

I was walking below this bank on afternoon when something caught my eye. Something grey and furry was rolling down the slope towards the brook. Before it reached the water, the furry ball suddenly split in who and became two squirrels. They chittered for a bit and then raced up to the top of the bank again, where in one carefully choreographed movement they jumped in the air, grasped one another's paws in the configuration you see Smith and Jones in, and then rolled down the slope again. They did it once more - then they noticed me watching and scarpered.

This amazed me. Normally when I see animals playing it usually involves play fighting or chasing - it's competitive play. This was the first time I ever saw two animals co-operate to make a game that would be impossible to play by themselves.

Just wait till the squirrels discover Zorbing...

This strip was originally intended to have Scrumpy playing Smudge's role, but I changed it for space reasons - I needed the extra level of Smudge's wall to be able to fit everything into the frame.