Nonetheless, we recently made a short trip up to see Grandparents in a socially-distant manner at their local park, and encountered no fewer than 4 grey squirrels. According to the girls the squirrels were playing peek-a-boo, and I really didn't have the heart to tell them that running straight up to whichever tree the squirrel was sat on, causing it to dodge around the back of the trunk fairly swiftly was more due to terror than game-playing!
Grey squirrels are possibly one of the most successful invasive mammals in the UK, and their seemingly cheeky antics have resulted in mixed reactions to their presence here. There have been widespread calls for culling to protect our slightly smaller red squirrel, and certainly there are some areas in the UK where this is a valid course of action. Grey squirrels carry a disease to which they are immune, but which has catastrophic impacts on the native reds, and will also compete for the same food source. However, in areas where the native red is absent - which in reality is large swathes of central and southern UK, mass eradication of the grey squirrel won't magically bring back the red without additional programmes to reintroduce it, even if there was a magic money-tree to fund all of this!
The grey squirrel was the very first mammal I introduced to the girls on one of our many, many trips to the park. Their inquisitiveness and familiarity with people make them easy to get fairly close to in many urban parks and they can often be seen on domestic birdfeeders too. Whilst they may not be a native species, it surely can't be wrong to love the one mammal that so many people actually see and can relate to on a daily basis?
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