-In the days of auld lang syne on Earth-that-was, in the Valley of of Plain Speech in the hinterlands beyond the Lake of Ambiguous Fortune, there lived a population of pre-intelligent squirrels. Historical mammologists have classified them into two main subspecies: the west valley ground squirrels and the east valley tree squirrels: numbers 9792 and 9794 in Umi's grand encyclopædia of Plain Speech creatures, but not necessarily respectively—I remember the numbers, but I can never remember which one is which.
+In the days of auld lang syne on Earth-that-was, in the Valley of of Plain Speech in the hinterlands beyond the Lake of Ambiguous Fortune, there lived a population of pre-intelligent squirrels. Historical mammologists have classified them into two main subspecies: the west-valley ground squirrels and the east-valley tree squirrels—numbers 9792 and 9794 in Umi's grand encyclopædia of Plain Speech creatures, but not necessarily respectively: I remember the numbers, but I can never remember which one is which.
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+Like many pre-intelligent creatures, both subspecies of Plain Speech Valley squirrels were highly social animals. Much of their social lives
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+(well, there's a reason the ascension of Earth-than-was would be sparked by the _H. sapiens_ line of hominids some millions of years later, rather than by the Plain Speech species 9792 and 9794.)