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‘Pest’. ‘Hateful’. ‘Atrocity of nature’. ‘Vermin’.
These are just some of the descriptions given when I asked my family about the grey squirrel. And in some ways I have to agree. There is not one day when I have come downstairs this year, and my mum’s bulbs have not been carefully excavated leaving a huge crater in the pot and soil sprinkled to the four corners of the garden. As you can imagine, this annoys my mum.
‘When I get my hands on him…’ she likes to fanaticise. But the fact is, nobody ever will. Squirrels, I found out, have some rather amazing evolutionary quirks that help them stay alive in people’s gardens.
Firstly, any grey squirrel can sniff out a freshly planted bulb in a pot from a distance of 11 metres away! Yes, I’m afraid it’s true. This means that if they were walking over the fence at the back of an average garden, this average squirrel would be able to smell, on average, at least 20 bulbs. Jackpot.
the grey
squirrel
7
by max dent