You May Expect A Visit From Several Armed SWAT Team Members Momentarily

Robin Page, writing in the Daily Mail is in for a "no-knock" visit from a British SWAT team at any moment. Why? Because of the subject matter of the column in question. Killing and eating all of the gray squirrels in Britain. Starting now.

"Ah, aren't they pretty" – that is one of the most popular phrases used by young children and old ladies as they watch grey squirrels in the park on a Sunday afternoon.

Well their reaction is understandable; grey squirrels with their dark oval eyes and bushy tails are certainly "pretty", but to my mind they would be far prettier if they were still confined to North America where they came from in the first place.

When the grey squirrel was introduced to this country by misguided animal lovers in 1876, it was thought to be a welcome addition to British fauna.

In truth it has been a disaster. Not simply because the grey squirrel devours birds' eggs, steals bird food, eats the bulbs in our gardens, ruins our lawns and damages the trees we love, but also because it has driven our indigenous red squirrel – the original Squirrel Nutkin, which is far prettier and much less aggressive than the grey – to the brink of extinction.

So out of hand is the situation that the Department For Environment, Food And Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has come up with a solution. With the help of scientists in the Forestry Commission and the U.S. it wants to develop an oral contraceptive for grey squirrels – to stop the present five million grey squirrels becoming ten million in five years' time.

The problem is that DEFRA will not get its scheme into operation for at least five years and by then it could be too late, because the red squirrel, now mainly holed up in small woodlands in Northern England and Scotland as its American cousin runs riot, could already be extinct.

The solution is quite simply, says Page:

As I say, the answer to the grey squirrel problem is not a fanciful high-falutin' contraceptive, it is far more simple: a proper cull should be organised, not for five years' time, but for tomorrow.

The reasons are clear. Apart from eating the eggs of songbirds and woodland birds, grey squirrels do an enormous amount of damage to growing trees and shrubs, causing million of pounds worth of damage each year. In Dublin's Phoenix Park, they destroyed 80 per cent of the saplings.

The damage to red squirrels is two-fold. The greys chase the reds about aggressively during the breeding season, making them too stressed to breed.

In addition, the greys carry a disease called squirrel poxvirus, which does little harm to themselves, but is extremely contagious and almost always fatal to reds.

In a properly organised cull, the grey squirrels should be trapped, shot and – I know this may offend some animal lovers – preferably eaten.

Squirrels are regularly eaten in the U.S. and it is surely time that Britain's host of celebrity chefs stopped patting each other on the back and did something useful like developing squirrel casserole, baked squirrel, smoked squirrel and squirrel pate.

Now, despite the howls of outrage Page's column will draw, there is one element of truth that needs to be understood here:

The trouble is that where animals and wildlife are concerned, reality has been suspended. In our metropolitan society, all furry animals except rats are sacred whatever damage they might inflict, so none of them can ever be killed. But nature is far more complicated than this.

We are now so divorced from the real world where animals are concerned that, when we buy junk food such as chicken nuggets, we don't pause to think they are made from hens kept and killed in the worst possible conditions.

Now, as to the visit from the police, remember this post from a while back?

The Cumberland News had published an article claiming that incomers from the South were releasing grey squirrels in the area – which prides itself on being one of the last bastions of the red squirrel population.

The Harrows, who used to live in Devon, sensed an anti-southern bias in the story and decided on a light-hearted response.

Mrs Harrow, 59, wrote: "We would like to inform any interested parties that we (formerly southerners) have just returned to our cottage with a crate full of wild grey squirrels from Epping Forest which we would be happy to supply to any other "outcomers", homesick for the South and in need of the odd grey squirrel to make them feel at home."

The Harrows were immediately visited by the police making an inquiry about alleged squirrel abuse. In addition, if the Robin Page who wrote this column happens to be the same Robin Page mentioned in this article, then he should be used to visits from the police over remarks made:

Mr Page, 61, was detained in a police cell after being interviewed about remarks made by him at a country fair at Frampton-upon-Severn, Glos, on Sept 6.

Yesterday, he vehemently denied having made any comment that could be construed as racist during the address, in which he encouraged his audience to attend the Liberty and Livelihood March in London later that month.

Also, please keep in mind that squirrels share a hive mind. They already know what Page has planned for them and are acting accordingly.