Squirrels

Wed 14 May 2008, 01:11

My wife and I just reflected that its odd, but we haven't seen any squirrels in Charlbury or the surrounding countryside since moving here 2 years back. I assume you mean - alas alack - gray N.American squirrels? If so, they are a menace to treedom. Fortunately they are also very tasty, as I know from my Canadian childhood! Most excellent with a fine mustard (French) or in a stew or pottage, sort of a cross between duck and lamb. Tell Fergus at the Bell Hotel - should increase his profit margin a bit.

Living near an Iroqois reservation and having school friends from such means I can make experientially observed comparisons between various species of cat, snake and other peculiar creatures not on the usual European - and certainly the ultra conservative English - menu.

As people may have surmised ... I don't like squirrels in wooded areas (given up on urban parks though) due to the damage they cause to saplings and destroying the process of natural succession of woodland growing on vacated land left to its own devices.

A Campaign of national identity beckons! Re-introduce the Red squirrel with mass breeding programs and mass pogroms against the American invaders, says I! It's bad enough that Thatcher, in tutelage to her Yank paymaster Reagan, should have corrupted the soul of Englishness and bred the evil spawn of Blairism, but to have to put up with foreign squirrels ringing our saplings ... it's too much! NO! Says I! Rise up with bow, sling, rifle or blunderbuss and remove the invading menace!

Unfortunately I'm a lousy shot with a rifle due to a persistent muscle tremor, ironic given that father was a Divisional champion with the Canadian second army in Britain, and Granpa was a Bisley military rifle champion in the early 1900s! (I'm not bad with a shotgun on moving targets though, muscle tremor doesn't come into that swinging movement to lead on a target, but its a toothbreaking experience if you don't dig out all the pellets, which is quite hard to do).

I will now don my tin helmet and retreat to the slit trench to avoid the hail of shrapnel that will no doubt rain down upon my place of refuge from all the lovers of the cute little fluffy and curly tailed darlings, ignorant they be of the devastation such cuties cause to a native flora un-adapted to their vegetative depredations...