MARINA ZURKOW
Another cheerful celebration of the squirrel commando, Paul Parker, just in from the Daily Mail. Paul Parker loves grey squirrels. Especially when they’ve been slow-cooked for eight hours with thyme, garlic and tomatoes. Certainly my braised grey squirrel on a cherry tomato risotto – £12.95 at the Manor House Inn, 15 miles outside Newcastle, near…
From an article by Paul MacInnes / guardian.co.uk, Friday 5 June 2009: Prince Charles is the patron (naturally) of the Red Squirrel Survival Trust, and as such hates those grey bastards with a passion. So much so that rather than simply using his letter to call for action, he’s instead said that all grey squirrels…
BBC April 2009: …for 43 years, 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.
Links to literature: http://www.europeansquirrelinitiative.org/reports.html Including THE RED SQUIRREL Redressing The Wrong by Charles Dutton
A genetic mutation of the UK enemy squirrel threatens to out-grab even the wild and power-hungry greys: This from 2008 – seems to have been affecting East Anglia mostly. Not sure what’s happening with them now.. been quite in the news. The black squirrel – a genetic mutation of the grey – was first recorded…
Owen, I like to imagine that you are Chief Squirrel Liaison for the Guardian. Owen, can you hear me? Do you heart the Red and hate the Grey, as much as your photos convey?
The article “The Squirrel Wars,” by D.T. Max, that ran in the NY Times in 2007 on the Red vs Gray struggle has a wonderful mid-section devoted to the House of Lords discussion on the subject. As a perhaps-important underscore, the House has cut hereditary peers’ membership by 90% in the recent decade. Lady Saltoun…
Well! Sad but inevitable use of animals as symbols. The squirrel of course is cute and wonderful, and was at one time well-adapted and in balance with its native habitat. But c’mon – I’ve been keeping quiet and recording “just the facts” about the critters – and it wasn’t hard to find this unsurprising (lock)step:…
+ + + + 22,586 Grey Squirrels trapped since January 2007 (statistic from the RSSP) + + + + This is a screen shot of the Northern Red Squirrels home page – a volunteer protection group: A link from their web site led me to an article in the Telegraph from April 2009, in which the Prince…
Sorry. I can’t stop myself. Here’s the best picture yet of a red squirrel. If ever there was a reason to protect the Reds, it’s their supersonic selfdom. Though this one looks wily enough to defeat the Pox.
I’m not sorry that the squirrel-human gyre keeps widening. There was apparently a time, not long ago, that the Squirrel Clubs of the Scottish Highlands had their sites on the Reds. This week the BBC published in a historical report, ‘Send Me Tails of Red Squirrels’ that …from 1903, there was an active effort on…
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…
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…
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…
In an effort to save the native Red Squirrel, the invasive Gray Squirrel in the UK been subject to a holocaust (esp in Northumbria, the last stronghold of the reds): Over 20,000 Gray Squirrels are Culled. Gray Squirrels were brought over from America in the early 19th century “to amuse the rich;” now they’ve gotten…
So much for the natives feeling less antipathy towards their compatriots. Elvis, an injured red squirrel, attacked a pensioner who came to his aid at the weekend, leaving the man needing hospital treatment. Ernie Gordon, 75, a squirrel fanatic who wrote a children’s book The Adventures of Rusty Red Coat, was called out last Friday…
Yggdrasil the world tree. Wägner, Wilhelm. 1882. Nordisch-germanische Götter und Helden In Norse mythology, Ratatoskr (Old Norse, generally considered “drill-tooth” or “bore-tooth”) is a squirrel who runs up and down the world tree Yggdrasil to carry messages between the unnamed eagle, perched atop Yggdrasil, and the wyrm Níðhöggr, who dwells beneath one of the three…