Squirrel Nutkin's Raiders

I usually think squirrels add to the ambiance of our place until I'm woken up by incessant squawking. And after I complained about the clever raccoons stealing our tomatoes a while back, Dara and I found a squirrel sitting on a fence gnawing away at a tomato. My apologies to the raccoons.

Sounds like the British imported our annoying gray squirrels long ago, and as Americans are often wont to do, they've taken over. Backed into an increasingly small rural area, the beloved red squirrel's fans are taking action.

The situation has now reached a crisis point: there are only an estimated 160,000 red squirrels left in Britain, whereas there are more than 2 million grays. Without human intervention, reds could be gone from England in 10 years.

There are government backed efforts, like Save Our Squirrels (S.O.S.), but the NYTimes article profiled a kind of Minutemen for red squirrels, the Red Squirrel Protection Partnership, that advocates the direct approach. Its leader, Lord Rodesdale,

is enthusiastic and unapologetic about his work and does not use euphemisms the way the S.O.S. organizations do. “What is this ‘method of cranial concussion’?” Redesdale asked Southworth and the two other women who met him in Southworth’s high-ceilinged living room, quoting something he had heard at a red-squirrel preservation conference. “Why not just say ‘hit on the head’? Sounds better.”

Next up: whippoorwills.