I arrived back last night to discover odd dark odourless pellets like large peppercorns dotted around our first floor flat, leading to chocolate biscuit packet (though curiously, not its contents) in a somewhat chewed state on the living room table. Google Images suggested (mercifully) a grey squirrel rather than a rat was the likely culprit.
G/f was still a bit grossed out, but I rather admired the little fella's chutzpah, as well as its deftness at not knocking over the windowsill plantpots, or anything else on its way (flat not terribly tidy). And possibly its cunning too - had it first worked out the coast was clear, or just taken a chance?
They certainly show little fear - a bike ride through nearby
Brompton Cemetery (however
cautious!) is always enlivened by the not inconsiderable risk of squashing the critters. Perhaps population pressure is now so great there that they are being driven to desperate measures elsewhere.
Yet would we sentimental townies ever countenance a
cull of the tree rat, however ambivalent we might feel about them? (Though I assume the "5th most popular UK animal" in
this poll last month was the altogether cuter, more timid red.)
