[Eichhörnchen]

"This is unthinkable!" The Headmaster stared furiously at the boy, who could not meet his gaze. "You and those two friends of yours! What are their names... yes: Oberon and Jimbuna. What kind of names are these anyway?" He got up from his desk and began to prowl behind the trembling pupil. "You and your friends, Mister Dowly, could be facing expulsion from School over this; how will you explain that to your father, the Earl of Dowly? I expected much more from you: your family's history stretches back to The Conquest. The Battle of Hastings no less, when Duke William gifted the Earldom to your ancestor, Sir Wilbur de Bumfrey."

The Head was greatly disappointed with Dowly. He might have expected such behaviour from the other two, but he was mortified to discover the involvement of this boy, with his family pedigree. The three of them had been found in the school library, uploading images detailing some unexpected interactions between livestock farmers and their charges, including sheep, horses and pigs, onto the laptop of an unpopular master.

What the Head couldn't have known was that, following the invasion of 1066 (about half-past four in the afternoon) Sir Wilbur de Bumfrey, carrying a mighty battle-axe, did wade ashore with his men-at-arms from their boat (having hidden away until the fighting had died down a bit) and entered the quaint Saxon village of Nosehair-On-The-Wolds, where they inflicted martial terror, laying about them with sword and mace until every chicken and duck in the place was killed. Then they found an inn, the "Strangled Bodkin", from which they ejected a terrified serf, the sole customer on the premises and, like themselves, reluctant to get involved in the unpleasantness going on up the road. There they spent the remainder of the afternoon boozing, until they were verily in their cups.

That evening, after a jolly game known to the Normans as "Ye Buttocke Frenzy", the precise nature of which is now lost to history but did include undressing, the igniting of gaseous bodily emissions and the exchange of garments, Sir Wilbur be Bumfrey did swap his clothes with a lowly man-at-arms, Boggis, then wandered out into the night where he met an English soldier who, dazed and confused by battle, was now also heading for the pub to get some in. These two found to their delight that they had certain hobbies and interests in common, so went off and disappeared into the mists of time.

Boggis woke up the next morning and, with his new retainers, processed to the brand-new Earldom of Dowly, which he'd learned had been granted to Sir Wilbur (i.e. him) by the Duke, where he commenced to enjoy the enormous benefits of the first historically recorded instance of identity-theft in this country. There are, I grant you, certain yawning great holes in this tale, but then I'm a squirrel, not a bleeding historian.

And so it was, after centuries of evading the Fraud Squad, that the "noble" family Dowly came to its' inevitable shame. "Breeding will out", so they say.

Ho-hum...