Doh!

[dinosaw]

Sometimes you have moments when you realise you have been really dense. Our cat Greta is a great hunter and along with mice, shrews and rats is a reasonable hunter of grey squirrel too, normally bagging 3 or 4 per year. Over the last few months though we have been surprised at the large amount of what we took for baby/immature squirrels she has been catching, only the tails ever remained for us to find. We were watching Autumnwatch the other day and it was in the Chilterns (where we live) with the Edible Dormouse project which is trying to trap this invasive and damaging species, also known as Glis Glis. We took one look at them and thought aha that is what she has been catching, not squirrels after all. Apparently there are a million of them in the Chilterns and they raid native birds nests amongst other damaging behaviour so for once it appears a cat is doing the birds a good turn.

 

[Marigold]

I saw that programme too, Dinosaw - a good example of wildlife taking species reduction into its own paws, so to speak, rather than by predation from humans. Your cat is on to a good thing - she must be a gourmet, - much better-tasting than rats I should think.

 

[dinosaw]

Apparently the Romans used to farm them, Marigold, feed them on nuts to fatten them up and then roast them and dip them in honey, almost tempted myself. We rarely feed Greta anymore and she is still getting fat, she certainly knows what she likes and leaves the shrews for us.

 

[ColinB]

When I lived in the middle of the Chilterns I had to get out the pest controller to off a wasp's nest. I asked him if he was busy... and he said it was non-stop glis-glis work. They would nest in lofts and scurry about etc etc and were causing huge damage in gardens.