Eat the enemy

It’s remarkable to think that a creature as common as the grey squirrel would have been largely unknown readers when the magazine was founded. It wasn’t until about eight years after Lewis Clement published the first issue that the rodents were released in the grounds of English country houses. Now, 140 years later, it’s believed there are 2.7 million of them in the UK and rising. I well remember seeing my first grey squirrel in Dumfries and Galloway; it was running past my house and, luckily, I had my brother’s 20-bore AYA out of the cabinet.