Dear Philippa,

 

Years ago I was appointed to a job at the Royal Society of Medicine by Dick Hewitt, its Executive Director, shortly before his own retirement and we became friends until his death in his eighties. He was one of the most interesting people I have known, and we often dined together at his club, the Special Forces Club behind Harrods, which he preferred to my own, the Groucho Club in Soho, an establishment too louche, too raffish for his sensibilities. During the later, less mobile years of his life we met at his home in Iffley where I would sometimes find him seated inside the open French windows of his study shooting grey squirrels in his garden with a .22 rifle. I learned from him that while it is not illegal to trap squirrels it is, having done so, against the law to release them again. You are obliged to kill them – trapping is not as sedentary a business as blasting away with rifle, which in any case he obviously enjoyed .

 

I was reminded of this yesterday when I read that a man had been fined £1500 for trapping a squirrel and drowning it in a water butt. He was prosecuted for cruelty under a law designed to protect domestic animals on the principle that a trapped squirrel is under the care and protection of man and therefore domestic. He was unaware of this, but that is no defence and it doesn’t take the mind of a Nobel laureate to figure out that animals do suffer in the process of drowning, never mind that it has for generations been the method of choice when dealing with an over-abundance of kittens.

 

The RSPCA I think it was offered the view that the correct way to proceed with trapped vermin is to step along to the vet and have them “put to sleep” at an estimated £70 a pop, advice likely to be heeded only by the hypersensitive and rich. Then, up pipes another animal welfare group declaring that the process of transporting a squirrel to the vet’s clinic would, under the law, also constitute causing suffering because it is stressful. Poisoning is out too, because poison is hard to come by and there is a risk of collateral casualties.

 

So, it seems that Dick had the right idea, but what are the chances of getting a firearms licence, especially if you are not a veteran of the Special Forces, or if you are a rotton shot come to that? Am I reminding you of Kafka here?

 

In the immediate post war years (WW2, that is), a period characterised by the rationing of sweets, jam made from turnips and recent familiarity with suffering unimaginable now to a squirrel or his champions, a more robust approach was taken to the verminous American import that was making life miserable, indeed impossible, for our own Squirrel Nutkin, the red. Open season was declared on the grey and anyone presenting himself at a police station with the tail of one would be rewarded with two shillings. The scheme was eventually abandoned, not on any animal welfare grounds but because the more enterprising of us started up squirrel farms for the express purpose of harvesting their tails and claming an easy two bob.

So, if you’ve got a bit of pest control in mind, first consult your lawyer. If you’re a squirrel, you can relax with a box of Quality Street and some cheap fiction.

 

Best wishes

 

Howard