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Squirrels on Crack

April 25th, 2006 - 2:59pm
On Saturday 8th October, an outlandish story about crack-addicted squirrels terrorising Brixton, south London, hit the British press. Reported in the Sun, the Daily Mirror, and even respectable broadsheet the Guardian, it was met with laughter and incredulity. Nevertheless it was presented as a news item, and the assumption was there must be at least an element of truth in it. So where did the story come from? And more to the point, was it true?

Published in issue 208 of the Fortean Times, April 2006

According to the press, the phenomenon was the result of a clampdown on street drug dealing in Brixton. Dealers had taken to burying their crack in gardens on the streets they worked so as not to risk being caught in possession, digging it up as and when it was needed.

The buried crack started going missing, sparking off war on the streets as dealers accused each other of stealing their stash. What they didn't know was that the crack was being dug up by squirrels, who having come across it on their foragings had developed a taste for the drug. Now innocent residents were being terrorised in their own gardens by violent crackhead squirrels desperate for their next fix.

The story was first reported the previous day in the South London Press, a small-circulation local newspaper for the inner south London boroughs. It was based on one "fact", an interview with a Brixton resident "who did not want to be named":

"I was chatting with my neighbour who told me that crack users and dealers sometimes use my front garden to hide bits of their stash.

"An hour earlier I'd seen a squirrel wandering round the garden, digging in the flowerbeds.

"It looked like it knew what it was looking for.

"It was ill-looking and its eyes looked bloodshot but it kept desperately digging. It was almost as if it was trying to find hidden crack rocks."

Note there is no explicit sighting of a squirrel taking crack - instead a suspiciously vague and hyperbolic comment with a distinctively journalistic flourish. However it is unlikely that a newspaper, no matter how small its circulation, would completely invent a front page story - it had to have origins somewhere.

So, were investigative reporters on the SLP following rumours and tantalising local myths, only to be thwarted by terrified locals unwilling to talk? No, they were surfing the internet like the rest of us. On 3rd October, a few days before the South London Press article, a discussion about drugs took place on the Brixton-based urban75.org website. A log from the day shows the following post:

"Yesterday I was chatting to one of my neighbours and he pointed out the reason I found his screwdriver in my front garden was that crack users / dealers sometimes hide bits of their stash in our garden.

"An hour earlier I'd seen a squirrel wandering round the garden, digging in the flowerbeds.

"Now I assume if the squirrel dug up a rock of crack and nibbled it it wouldn't get any effect. But what if it did? And do I face the prospect of dreaded crack squirrels? Turf wars (flower bed wars) between dealers and squirrels? :confused:

"Squirrels have nasty bites so I'm now worried by being done over by a twitchy squirrel."

From innocent joke to local paper to plastered all over the national press - if I was that poster I'd be pretty pleased with myself.

In some ways it's a shame that an urban myth of this calibre’s origins can be tracked down so quickly and easily. In the days before the internet, the above joke would have been told in the pub and, with luck, slowly spread until Chinese whispers made it fact, maybe eventually appearing in print, with little hope of finding the real story behind it. Instead, a lazy journalist picked it off the internet and embellished it, further lazy journalists picked it from a local paper, and a bit of googling exposes it as a sham. If older, classic urban myths came about in the present day, sadly they'd probably follow the same route.

But all is not lost - the South London Press article carried an interesting statement to back up its story: "crack-addicted squirrels are a well-known phenomenon in the parks of New York and Washington DC." I hope this isn't just a made-up qualifier for the story, and that maybe there is more to crackhead squirrels than this story suggests - because in many ways I want such a great urban myth to be true. No matter the obvious fabrication of the story, as a Brixton resident myself I can't help watching the squirrels in my garden for signs of crack addiction.