A plague of rats is coming

Published: Thursday, March 09, 2006

Forget the sentimental nonsense about grey squirrels. They are as much of a menace as their not-so-cute cousins, the rat. Why will Canadians refuse to learn lessons from older societies that have discovered to their chagrin what problems we can avoid by acting now, rather than waiting until our problems become unmanageable crises?

In Britain, the culling of the grey squirrel menace is the responsibility of a joint effort by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Forestry Commission, English Nature, the National Trust, the RSPCA and the European Squirrel Initiative.

Does that sound as if they consider the grey squirrel to be a slight nuisance?

Mainland European countries including Italy, France, Switzerland and Germany are also at the open-war stage against this very destructive vermin. Evidence shows that grey squirrels are not only voracious consumers of birds' eggs, food crops and fruit, they are vectors of a virus that can affect sheep, cows and goats.

Parents who allow their children anywhere near the obnoxious and dangerous little pest should have more sense. We need to have a serious culling program energetically enforced before we have a grey squirrel problem rivalling the biblical plague of frogs.

Jack Clover,

Victoria.