Ridding London of vermin

Flicking through this evening’s standard Evening Standard I was delighted to note that Simon Jenkins had penned another of his charming missives, this time on the scourge of the urban fox.

Malicious: A fox hellbent on destroying clematis

As he recounts, this animal, with scant respect for his legal rights as a homeowner, had trespassed upon HIS property, dug under the shed and “buried the adjacent flower bed in soil and leaves”. The bloody cheek of it! A flower bed is clearly no place for soil and he is right to call for this animal's immediate destruction.

But oh no- the council had different ideas. They advised him to urinate in his garden to deter foxes, as if someone like Simon Jenkins would ever be responsible for nasty and repugnant emanations in public!

It puts him in mind of a friend who, when confronted with an injured fox on her front lawn, called the council to remove it but, far from hitting over the head with a shovel and tossing its corpse into the nearest landfill, it was “taken on a stretcher to a clinic in Borehamwood”! What is wrong with these people?! Have they no COMPASSION for ratepayers?!

The problems with London gardens don’t stop there - the truth is that pigeons - overweight pigeons at that, squirrels and mice also deign to trespass upon what is Simon’s PRIVATE property, pooping where they please and ruining the strip clematis:

The truth is that London's small gardens are infested. In mine, pigeons so fat their legs can hardly support them roll about on the steps. Parakeets squawk in the trees. Grey squirrels munch their way through rose buds and strip clematis. Mice trot this way and that, leaving little trails of droppings. Foxes treat garden sheds as free bed and breakfast. The place is like Jurassic Park.

It’s unbelievable. It’s as if these “animals” seem to think they they can roam freely upon the earth with scant regard for the finer points of conveyancing law.

It’s not just in the cities either - these newcomers to our landmass seem to think they can cock a snook to those attempting to run heavily indebted country estates. I myself was recently forced to issue a badger, that my groundskeeper Jose found trespassing in the lower field, with a cease and desist order from the local magistrate. Not only did the badger pretend not to understand the Queen’s English, it proved most unreceptive to dialogue before successfully biting my face!

Not until the birds cease to sing in the trees and mice are driven from our ONCE GREAT LAND will we be able to sleep soundly in our beds. These people who bleat on about Britain’s freedoms and extremely high quality of life ought to walk a mile in our shoes and realise that, actually, it is HELL ON EARTH because of all the squirrels in our gardens.