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forum comments on UK squirrel immigrants

Credit crunch dining
Rename grey squirrel meat as ‘spruce venison’ and watch it fly off the shelves at Waitrose.

so
I dunno. Bloody immigrants – come over here, climb our trees, grab our nuts….

Armstrong and Miller
Kill them. Kill them all.

None of the mamby pamby stuff….
Grey squirrels are non-indigenous vermin that also eat bird eggs and dig up plants to eat the roots, and gardeners often have their entire crops of home grown veg lost in the spring when the grey squiels eat the shoots.
Grey squirrels should be terminated on sight, trapped, poisoned and hunted to extinction in the UK. People caught feeding them should be prosecuted. They have no place here, even though some people find them cute.

Tree huggers
The problem here has been the belief that the grey squirrel is somehow all cute and cuddly. They’re anything but. But it’s good to see that someone in power has realised the need to at least control – if not eradicate – the grey squirrel population. Foxes and rabbits next I hope.

SirClarke
Shooting them is never really going to solve your problem as killing a couple will just leave space for more to come in. Unless you want to spend all your time staking out the bird squirrel feeder and probably maiming a few whilst also scaring off your birds and destroying the feeder with pellets in the process then you probably need another solution.
I would have thought separate bird and squirrel feeders is your easiest solution, just make one lot an absolute pain to get to (covers/greased poles etc) and one really easy for them – even just on the ground.
Squirrels are pretty interesting to watch anyway and seeing as there’s absolutely no hope of ever getting rid of them from the UK you may as well embrace and enjoy them.

R60EST
Apart from the colour , what is the difference between a red and grey squirrel. The red is supposed to be native to britain and given it’s low numbers is a protected species , yet grey ones are vermin . Why ?

[…]
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Once there are too many red squirrels, they’ll be wondering if they have made the wrong choice, for red doesn’t really match the colour of the forests.
Why don’t people scream colour discrimination? Especially the animal rights.

and from Facebook:

Name:
Association for the Nullification of the Grey Squirrel Threat (ANGST)
Description:
Grey squirrels are VERMIN, overgrown tree rats. They out-compete our UK noble native Red Squirrels, and as harbingers of DISEASE they spread their fatal squirrel pox (squirrel parapoxvirus).
We are instigating a REVOLUTION, the rising up against the grey hordes of death.
We must garner support for the eradication of this pest, calling for the total ANIHILLATION of the species on our shores, never ceasing until the last rotting carcass of a grey squirrel is accounted for.
We need to instigate… (read more)
ANGST is a recent splinter group from the “I hate Grey Squirrels” group. It was an almost amicable parting of the ways. We felt that it was not pro-active enough, and not enough blood was being shed. We advocate research (modes of death, tracking devices, etc.), selective breeding of suitable hunting dogs, and the crushing of all dissenters. “I hate Grey Squirrels” was far too tame – it was just all talk.


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Luo Ping

There’s an exhibit up at the Met of Luo Ping’s works until January 10

Hanshan and Shide (detail)
Hanshan and Shide (detail)

… a vivid description of him, his wife, his master + context:

WIT AND NON-CONFORMIST, bohemian and connoisseur, devout Buddhist and self-proclaimed expert on the supernatural, the 18th-century Chinese painter, Luo Ping was all this and more. Luo was a native of Yangzhou, where the Grand Canal meets the Yangzi and the centre of a thriving salt trade. Destroyed in 1645, merchant patronage and increasing affluence during the nascent century of Manchu rule (1644-1911) turned it into a southern cultural metropolis, complete with scholarly and artistic pursuits. Home to more than a hundred renowned painters – according to Li Dou’s Yangzhou huafang lu (Record of the Flower Boats of Yangzhou, 1795), it was synonymous with the ‘Eight Eccentrics of Yangzhou’, a loosely knit group of bold individualists. They subjected the traditional tenets of Chinese painting to much experiment, dwelling on the figurative genres of flowers, plants, rocks and portraiture. Labelled guai, ‘eccentric’ for their unconventional ways, they paid homage to no particular school. Luo Ping was the youngest proponent of the ‘Eight Eccentrics’, and although a timely representative of his age, has remained somewhat eclipsed…

Plum Blossom
Plum Blossom

In 18th-century Yangzhou, the plum blossom, Prunus mume, was a living subject. The precursor to spring and sign of renewal, it evoked many associations and sentiments. Jin Nong introduced the classical plum blossom in all its complexities to his pupil. During a six-week stay with the Luo family, he painted the monochromatic Plum Blossoms (1757), inspiring their devotion to the tree, which eventually earned them the accolade, the ‘Luo Family Plum School’. Another partner in Luo Ping’s work was his wife, Fang Wanyi (1732-1779), whom he had married at nineteen, in a ‘modern’ union of like-minded souls. One 10-leaf album, Figures, Flowers and Plants is a unique collaboration by Jin, Luo and Fang; the master painted the first five leaves, the next two are by the couple and the last three feature Luo’s finger painting techniques. In Leaf 3 (1760), Fang Wanyi’s orchids, symbol of moral integrity and female refinement are paired with Luo’s plum blossoms.

– Asian Art

  • Ghost Amusement Scroll (detail)
  • Ghost Amusement Scroll (detail)
    • Posted on

    How’d this happen?

    The jumps are so crazy – ours and China’s.
    Obama has agreed to go to Copenhagen – albeit on the front end of the talks. Breeze through and set the bar?
    I don’t mean to sound so dubious, but the stalemate between China and us is already nearly set, with smaller countries caviling about why they should have to share a commensurate burden when they did so little to contribute to the current state of things. I get it, but also think we need to be way past whining about how unfair it all is, and make a new program. Easy for me to say…

    But there IS a stall – good recap of the conflicts here at Global Change. Excerpt:

    • India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, says the negotiations are unlikely to go anywhere unless wealthy nations embrace more ambitious emissions reductions and promise more money to help developing countries cope with climate change.
    • China, the world’s largest emitter, is moving forwards with aggressive energy-efficiency targets and renewable-energy mandates — but has yet to pledge binding commitments or agree a date to level off its explosive emissions growth…
    • To achieve a solution, developed countries must show leadership in Copenhagen. They should promise cuts equal to, or deeper than, 40% for 2020. If the Annex I parties are unwilling or unable to do this, the rest of the world would be discouraged from taking serious action. A more likely outcome in Copenhagen would be a statement that the world intends to limit global warming to 2 °C by 2050. Emission reductions and mitigation actions for individual parties will have to be specified later.
    Posted on

    water + oil

    In 2007, some 200 billion liters of bottled water were sold worldwide, and Americans took the biggest gulp: 33 billion liters a year, an average of 110 liters per person. That amount has grown 70% since 2001, and bottled water has now surpassed milk and beer in sales. Many environmental groups have been concerned with this surge because they suspected that making and delivering a bottle of water used much more energy than did getting water from the tap. But until now, no one really knew bottled water’s energy price tag.Environmental scientist Peter Gleick of the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit research organization in Oakland, California, and his colleague Heather Cooley have added up the energy used in each stage of bottled-water production and consumption. Their tally includes how much energy goes into making a plastic bottle; processing the water; labeling, filling, and sealing a bottle; transporting it for sale; and cooling the water prior to consumption.

    – from Resilience Science

    and from Mother Jones:

    Researchers at the Pacific Institute in Oakland California ran the numbers and found that bottle production alone wastes 50 million barrels of oil a year (that’s 2.5 days of US oil consumption). Add to that energy the energy needed to process the water, label the bottles, fill the bottles, seal the bottles, transport the bottles, cool them prior to sale… well, you get the idea.

    Bottom line: Bottled-water drinkers in the US alone in 2007 squandered the equivalent of 32 to 54 million barrels of oil. Triple that number for worldwide use. For perspective, imagine each bottle is one-quarter full of oil.

    As reported at Treehugger: Bottled-water drinkers are the new smokers.