Simon's Blog - The Battle Of The Bulge

If you've started the new year with slightly tighter clothes and the disappointing realisation that you perhaps ate a bit more than you planned to over the festive break, here's the good news, you can now blame it on the weather.

Well if you're a squirrel that is!

You see the mild weather this winter has meant a plentiful supply of food for some creatures and as Martin Stew has been finding out they may well have overdone it a bit too.

Course you could argue that those squirrels are only overweight because they’ll eat any old rubbish, which is backed up by this picture from Sid Saunders in St Leonards-on-Sea.

But there is evidence of other interesting squirrel meals in my meridianweather@itv.com inbox.

Helen Holland in Steyning found one tucking into a chocolate birthday cake.

She was most impressed that it was nibbling on a complete square!

Cecilia in Bournemouth found one that it would appear likes chips.

Well a chip at least.

But here’s one that goes one step further. Malcolm Nicholson from Canterbury was in Alaska recently and spotted this one...

...pinching smoked salmon!

Get him!

But it's not just us and the squirrels thinking about a diet just now.

Meet Gretel the hairy armadillo who lives at Drusillas Park in Alfriston.

Despite eating a varied diet of locusts, mealworms, wax worms, eggs, rice and vegetables, she too has put on a bit of extra weight over Christmas.

Here she is on the scales...

...with around 500g to shift, that’s a pound and a bit to you and me, so she’s now on the fresh veg diet.