Grey Squirrels, the rats of the trees

I confess to never having particularly wondered why the squirrels that you typically see in a Beatrix Potter illustration (think Squirrel Nutkin) look something like this…

When all the squirrels you actually see in the parks look something like this…

I hadn’t really realised that there were two types of Squirrels — the grey and the red. The red is the native, traditional English squirrel, somewhat smaller than the grey and appears in all the books.The grey is the brash, aggressive American import that arrived on British shores around the 1900’s and has aggressively out competed the red ever since (with the help of a nasty virus that the greys carry but kills the reds) to the degree that the reds exist only in a very small area in the far north and are endangered.The brits generally refer to the greys as “rats in trees” or other disparaging remarks. I even saw a cooking show extolling the virtues hunting and then eating the nutty flavoured, gamey, protein rich squirrel meat as something to aid the dwindling local red population.It’s interesting (and sad) to see that it’s not only Australia that suffers competition at the expense of aggressive imported (intentionally or otherwise) species.