…from 1903, there was an active effort on estates across the Highlands to trap, shoot and kill reds.
By 1946, the Highland Squirrel Club had killed 102,900 squirrels and paid out £1,504 in bounties.
Tails were submitted as proof of kills.
There are several ironies in the story of the club, which was formed in 1903.
Reds were extinct, or on the brink of extinction, in the Highlands by the 1800s because of a loss of woodland habitat.
In 1844, Lady Lovat of Beaufort Estate near Beauly, succeeded in getting the government to re-introduce the squirrels to the Highlands.
Ian Collier, of the Highland Red Squirrel Group – a modern day organisation set up to protect reds – believed the creatures were seen by some owners of “big houses” as a “fashion accessory” to add to their landscaped gardens.
Mr Collier said: “What is ironic is that many of the red squirrels were re-introduced from England, now among the worst-hit areas for squirrel pox, which kills reds.
“Other reds were introduced from populations in Sweden.”
Friend Richard O’Flynn (whom I will ask for a close reading) alerted me to the 1973 UK Public Information Films of Tufty the Red Squirrel. BBC News published a tribute to Tufty in 2006:
Tufty is a colossus of public information. Though just a small squirrel, he was a phenomenon who bestrode childhoods from the early 1960s onwards. Through very simple films, books and stories, Tufty persuaded pre-school children that the road could be a dangerous place. This was done through the medium of burst footballs and dropped ice-creams, rather than something which young eyes might find too upsetting, such as squashed squirrels.
The comments at the end of the article include some melancholic reminiscences of childhood, related to Tufty’s vivid lessons –
I was traumatized by a Tufty experience as a child when I lived in Cheshire. I SO wanted to join the Tufty Club and after many attempts I persuaded my Mum to take me to enrol. I was devastated to learn that I was too old (aged 8). I have never fully recovered from this disappointment Claire, Fort Wayne, Indiana, US
and here, of course, is Tufty with suggestive overdubs.
Sadly, these are some of the new Tufty products put out by the RoSPA (The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents) … for all your safety needs:
A set of colourful Tufty character masks, with simple instructions and teaching notes. Children can pretend to be their favourite character – Tufty, Willy, Becky, Minnie, Mrs Owl or Policeman Badger.
This is from a wondrous article in the NY Times today on ant research (thanks, NN). The mysteries unfold:
Two harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex rugosus) from adjacent nests engaging in ritual warfare, pushing in a display of force but not actually harming each other. It is thought that colonies use these mock battles to gather information about their neighbors. Knowledge about the strength of competing colonies helps ants set territorial borders without loss of life.
Apropos nothing except looking in depth at Victorian naturalists, I found this passage by Gosse from a digitized Google Book copy of “The Romance of Natural History” (1863)
Gosse’s use of the “you” seems more choose-your-own-adventure than Victorian nature narratives. He declares in the preface that he’s taken an aesthetic approach, and while he denies poet genius, he feels the compulsion of poetry. What would we do without the weather?
HYENA.
Or would you see the hyena, where he feels most at home, surrounded by scenes and circumstances most congenial to his habits? Then plod your weary way still further across the sands, and pause not till you encamp amid the gorgeous remains of that ancient City of the Wilderness,
” Whose temples, palaces,—a wondrous dream,
That passes not away,—for many a league
Illumine yet the desert.”
There sit down alone amid the ruined fanes lighted up by the setting sun, and watch the approach of night, just at the breaking up of the long dry season. Everywhere around are the remains of the glorious city; walls, and gateways, and columns of polished granite of rosy hue, or of marble that gleams like snow in the bright moonlight; many standing in their desolateness, but many more prostrate and half-buried in the drifted sand. Some of the pillars are but dimly seen in the gloomy shadow of the lofty walls, others stand out boldly and brightly in the soft moonbeams, while here and there a brilliant gleam slants down through the windows of a ruined edifice, and illumines the deep and delicate sculpture of a fallen capital, or spreads over a heap of disjointed stones. Under yon dark and gloomy portal the eye wanders over distant funereal towers crowning the eminences, the noble gateway of the grand avenue, and lines of columns gradually lost in the distance.
But while you gaze, there is a change. The breeze, which had lifted the sand in playful eddies, drops to perfect calmness. Black clouds are collecting over the mountain range that forms the distant horizon. The moon is obscured, and the whole heaven becomes black with tempest. A hurricane suddenly sweeps through the ruined palaces, and fills the whole air with a dense fog of blinding sand. Then a flash of forked lightning shoots between the columns, illuminating them for an instant, and is instantaneously followed by a bursting crash of thunder, which makes the tottering fanes tremble, and huge drops of warm rain, like blood-drops, are spattering the stones. The rain now comes down in one universal deluge, flooding the floors, and pouring off from the old marble platforms in cataracts. Flash follows flash in one continuous blaze of blinding light, bringing out the grim marble towers and pillars against the black clouds of midnight with an awfully sublime distinctness; and crash after crash, and peal after peal of thunder are blending into one uninterrupted roll.
But amidst the deep roar rises from the gaunt heaps of stone an unearthly sound, like the laugh of a demon. Again, the cackling mirth echoes along the ruined halls, as if exulting in the wild war of the elements, and in the desolation around. Lo! from out of yon low arch, in the Place of Tombs, gleam two fiery eyes, and forth stalks into the lightning the fell hyena. With bristling mane and grinning teeth, the obscene monster glares at you, and warns you to secure a timely retreat. Another appears, bearing in its jaws a loathsome human skull, which it has found in the caravan track. You shudder as you hear the bones crack and grind between the powerful teeth, and gladly shrink away from the repulsive vicinity.
Food Source and Patriotic Duty. Photo from the New York Times.
A few morsels from the New York Times’ January 2009 article on “Saving a Squirrel by Eating One” article. If you are so enchanted as to sample the cute critters, the last excerpt certainly puts a dent in the argument for delighting in consumption:
Enter the “Save Our Squirrels” campaign begun in 2006 to rescue Britain’s red squirrels by piquing the nation’s appetite for their marauding North American cousins. With a rallying motto of “Save a red, eat a gray!” the campaign created a market for culled squirrel meat.
British bon vivants suddenly couldn’t get enough squirrel. Television chefs were preparing it, cookbooks were extolling it, farmers’ markets were selling out of it and restaurants in many places were offering it on the menu.
Nichola Fletcher, a food writer and co-owner of a venison farm, held a squirrel tasting for Britain’s Guild of Food Writers, finding “their lovely flavor tasted of the nuts they nibbled.” At a later event, however, she found the flavor disappointing, with “a greasy texture and unpleasant taste,” presumably reflecting these squirrels’ diet.
Fergus Henderson…who cooks with both poetry and passion, sometimes prepares his squirrels “to recreate the bosky woods they come from,” braising them with bacon, “pig’s trotter, porcini and whole peeled shallots to recreate the forest floor.” He serves it with wilted watercress “to evoke the treetops.”
Other chefs may be less lyrical, but they are no less enthusiastic. The Famous Wild Boar Hotel in Britain’s Lake District serves squirrel Peking-duck style; at Matfen Hall, a grand country house hotel, it is layered with hazelnuts into a terrine; in Cornwall, it can be found baked into the iconic meat pie known as a pasty.
If you want to grab your shotgun, make sure you have very good aim — squirrels must be shot in the head; a body shot renders them impossible to skin or eat. (You want to get rid of the head in any event, as squirrel brains have been linked to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of mad cow disease.)
Not such new news, though. This article from the Telegraph in June 2005:
A restaurant selling squirrel terrine has been forced to withdraw it after death threats from animal rights activists.Protesters threatened to firebomb the Hadley Bowling Green Inn in Droitwich, Worcs, and to smash up the staff’s cars over the £7.95 paté starter.
A female housekeeper was told: “I’m glad I don’t work here because I wouldn’t want to die in the fire.”
After the dish was featured on local television the restaurant received about 25 threatening telephone calls and a string of malicious e-mails.
Its spokesman, Barney Reynolds, said: “The last thing we would want to do is to pander to this sort of intimidation.
“But the fact is that some of the staff were coming into work fearing for their lives.”
He added: “We’ve never had to take something off the menu before because of threats from protesters. I don’t know why squirrel meat is so controversial.
“In the past we’ve sold meat from fluffy little lambs and it’s not been a problem.”
Squirrels.
Imagine them:
Red feather headdresses
versus gray flannel suits
of the Wall Street reivers.
Landgrabbing American Grays – purveyors of squirrel
pox pockets – turn little Reds into sludge.
BRITAIN’S FAVORED NATIVES SACKED BY IMMIGRANTS, say headlines;
diseases carrying foreigners, or foreigners carrying disease – either way.
Like Mayflower, like Ailanthus, they come with fanfare, as
idealists or ornamentals; these nature-shifter parasites enthuse wildly. And they
don’t share. Great Northumbrian verminators in camouflage are on a killing spree,
mandating: Do your part, Britain! Gray squirrel loin is hardly greasy or unpleasant…
Friend Richard O’Flynn (whom I will ask for a close reading) alerted me to the 
