Well it's been a hard day's night spraying all the grey squirrels red in my local park to fool the Pest Control 'operatives' from the local council.If you ask me culling them is taking anti-Americanism too far. First we import them from the States in the 19th Century. Now we complain there's too many of them and they have to die! Oh and then we accuse them of killing all the native red squirrels.
I asked a red squirrel in Yorkshire if this was the case. 'Oh no', replied Tufty 'It were the bubblegum and the stockings what did it. Our red womenfolk couldn't resist and there weren't hardly any left for us red menfolk to breed with, so we started dying out! If you look closely you'll see today's greys still have flashes of red on their heads, paws and tails. We Yorkshire squirrels had to make do. No jitterbugging for us.'
So the greys are victims of their own success it would seem. Not that we humans can talk, having long lost control of our own numbers.
And now reds are being bred out it would appear. As a red, I propose a cull of brunettes, blondes, greys and whites to redress the balance...
2 comments:
I can see the point of culling grey squirrels, to help reds to survive. However people like grey squirrels and in lots of places they bring brightness into parks where there's not a chance a red would be found.
Culling grey squirrels doesn't work. It causes the remaining population to breed quicker to recolonise the area and encourages immigrants, which can cause the increased spreading of the SQPV (the pox virus that greys carry and is fatal to reds). There is no case in the mainland UK where culling has led to successfully reintroduced red populations. On islands it may be a different story, but grey squirrels can repopulate an area quickly. Money would be better spent on a vaccine for the SQPV and in planting forests where reds have the edge in competition.
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