Grey Squirrels

I saw this letter in an edition of BBC Wildlife magazine regarding an interview with naturalist and TV presenter, Chris Packham, that appeared in their June issue.

I haven't seen the original interview, so I can only imagine the full extent of the squirrel abuse he vented, but let's examine what we do know more closely:

One, Packham has imagined a 'magic' button that is capable of wiping out an entire species.

Two, there's a queue lining up to press this button, and Packham's right at the front.

Three, he's arbitrarily chosen to exterminate a creature purely based on its colour.

Now I was never a big fan of the Really Wild Show, but this time Packham has gone too far. Jeremy Clarkson suggests shooting a few teachers and is hailed as the next anti-christ, but Packham is allowed to happily wander the corridors of the BBC bothering sparrows and endorsing genocide? (and who taught him magic anyway? That was just irresponsible)

Now, who else is in this queue for this 'magic button'? I'm assuming Terry Nutkins, definitely, and maybe Pol Pot or Bill Odie behind.I can imagine Chris pushing them all out of the way to get to the front, frothing at the mouth in blood-thirsty desperation, with Nutkins and Odie egging him on with cries of "DO IT CHRIS!"

And what happens when the 'magic' button is pressed? Does every grey squirrel suddenly drop dead? Maybe an airborne virus is released that slowly shuts down every organ in their poor little grey bodies, leaving millions of rotting squirrel corpses littering the streets of Great Britain? Is that what Packham wants?

Or perhaps the 'magic button' merely just makes all grey squirrels disappear in a puff of fairy dust, so we can all quietly forget about them as if it never happened. YOU'D LIKE THAT WOULDN'T YOU PACKHAM?



PACKHAM: Owls are OK, everything else goes

 Why the hatred for the grey squirrel? Well the conspiracy theory is that the introduction of grey squirrel to the UK by humans in the late 18th century from North America to satisfy a whim of Queen Victoria has led to the decline of the the country's 'natural' population of red squirrels. The aggressive grey breed eats seven times as much food as their gentle burgundy cousins, and their rapid growth has seen the red squirrel population drop to just 160,000 compared with 2.5 million greys.

That's why Packham despises them.

EITHER THAT OR HE JUST THINKS THEY HAVE BORING FUR.

Of course, human beings are animals too, just as much a part of nature as the squirrel. Bringing the greys to the UK was just as 'natural' the thousands of animals and plants that colonised the British isles on their own accord after Ice Age. Our influence on the planet is as natural as ants digging up their environment to build gigantic ant hills or a horde of locusts destroying fields of crop. Indeed humans themselves are not native to Britain, so the grey squirrel has as much right to be here as we do.

But Packham's brain can't understand that, and now nothing can stop his one-man mission, armed with MAGIC, to cleanse the country of the GREY MENACE.

Kind Grey Squirrel enjoys daffodils

Or maybe Packham just prefers the colour red to the colour grey, and has invented his magic button in order to impose his colour preference on the world. Would ALL grey things would be exterminated in Packhams New World Order? Grey seals? Grey parrots? DAVID GRAY?!?

And if we allow Packham to use his magic button to rid us of the pesky grey squirrels, ask yourself - what's next? Other animals that we find a bit annoying?

Wasps? Toads? Birds that sing early in the morning? CHINESE PEOPLE?!?

And he calls himself a vegetarian. Shame on you Chris.


(oh yeah and p.s. i ate some sweets yum yum 5 out of 7 wevs)