Expensive Squirrel.....

[Chil1234]

Nabbing a pesky grey squirrel and cleanly drowning it in a water butt earned this man an RSPCA prosecution and a £1500 fine. It is illegal to release a grey squirrel into the wild so, should you ever be in a position where you have caught one and need to dispose of it, the correct method of dispatch recommended by the RSPCA is to place it in a bag and bang it over the head with a shovel. (Much more humane, obviously) Or you can fork out actual money for a vet to put it to sleep.

Moral of the story is that if you have nosey animal-loving neighbours, wait until nightfall before scattering the slug pellets..... Mad.

fucking animal rights loonies.

RSPCA say 'you have to take it to the vet to have it put down'? At what, £85?

I suppose all the meat in the stores is killed like that.....

(Where are all the animal rights loonies this week. Cute furry creature viciously drowned and no uproar? No 'We Love Roof Rats' Facebook support page? No death threats? .... )

I could never kill a Squirrel i adored them as a child and had about 100 'stuffed' ones.

I dont think drowning is the best method or very quick and painless, surley its better to knock it on the head?

If you trap a live squirrel in a huumane trap, take it to your nearest RSPCA office for disposal.

Nearest RSPCA office? According to their website, the nearest one doing Emergency Wildlife Care is in Brighton.

You'd kill more wildlife on the journey down there.

Take it into one of the charity shops, then.

oh dear - DH and I catch them on the allotment, drown them and then eat them.... don't think anyone will report us though as they're all thrilled the furry buggers aren't chomping their veg...

do you have any recipes?

I hadn't thought of eating them.

Mind you we don't really get many squirrels in our garden, and I'd feel bad about trapping them down the park

First of all - why trap one?

Secondly - If you accidentally trapped one (don't see how) you could take it to the police station and tell them it was illegal to release it into the wild. No need for expensive euthanasia.

Three - anyone who deliberately drowns an animal is a utter fucking arsehole. And should pay the fuck up.

ah - x-posted with a squirrel drowner

meh - still think drowners are arseholes

wow knitter do you really? how do you cook them?

sorry but it's ludicrous to waste the police's time on a squirrel. It just is.

And it's still expensive, because the police don't work for free.

I didn't say it wasn't ludicrous - I agree that the law's stupid. But in order for the person to avoid committing a criminal act (releasing a squirrel into the wild) then you might have to.

Lauriefairycake - I paid £33K last year to have my thatch redone, mainly because it had been attacked by a squirrel who had caused so much damage to the roof that it was at risk of collapsing the inner structure. Only an 'utter fucking arsehole' would glorify a tree rat IMHO.

If you took a tree rat squirrel to a police station they would quite likely tell you to feck off. Similarly if you took them a blackbird or a badger, what exactly do you think, that they have marksmen waiting on the chance that someone might come in with a squirrel

I trapped ours (in a proper squirrel trap) and released it a very long way away, which is illegal but given they only range a few miles and I put it on a nature reserve, it at least had a chance. The alternative was to shoot it.

I don't agree with drowning squirrels or any other animals. Putting them in a bag and bashing them is a good alternative, however bear in mind they are not cuddly little creatures, they do bite quite hard and carry disease as they are, in case you don't know vermin.

There is a man in the North East somewhere who is making quite a good living out of trapping/killing unwanted grey squirrels (of which there are millions) and then selling them to butcher's shops... Apparently they are very tasty and low in fat.

Here's a recipe for Squirrel Pasties

Laurie - happy to be called a utter fucking arsehole although I assure you i'm perfectly nice the rest of the time. Also i'd like to point out that the squirrels i'm dealing with are such vicious little buggers that there is no way i'm taking them out of the nice safe metal trap and tipping them into a sack to then hit them over the head with a spade.

Obviously before you eat a squirrel you first need toskin it and gut it. We then joint them up and use them in casseroles. They're quite like gamey chicken. They do need to be cooked all day in a slow-cooker to tenderise the meat though as they're quite tough...

I am not 'glorifying a tree rat' - I agree with bashing it quickly over the head.

It's the drowning part I disagree with - it's unnecessarily cruel.

And I have no problem with trapping it and releasing it either - I too would have broken the law in this way.

And yes, the police station I used to work at used to arrange for disposal of any animals brought in (usually road-not-quite-killed )

oooh and why do we trap them.... because they eat anything vagually ripe looking on the allotment and because it's free food.

It also provided an interesting dissection lesson for my DH - who would have thought that at the age of 40 he thought that poo came from your large intestine and wee from your small intestine....

Putting a squirrel in a bag and hitting it with a spade seems outrageously cruel to me - there is no precident for it in nature. I'd imagine that you hit several 'wrong' bits of the squirrel severly hurting it before you got a 'killer' blow to the head. Couldn't do that.

Well I live in the sticks and you would be given the number of the local council to arrange disposal round here after you'd done the deed yourself.