Eat Squirrel? You Must Be Nuts!

How do you view the Grey Squirrel? Is it a cute fluffy little creature, whose arboreal acrobatics, you admire, does it amaze you with its apparently, intelligent abilities to extract the peanuts from the bird feeder? Or is it merely a bushy-tailed vagabond tree rat? And more to the point, would you eat it in a pasty?

This subject is all over the news today and has split the public into separate camps. I’m finding myself in moral and culinary turmoil over this one. I eat meat without guilt, just as long as I know where it comes from and that the animal has had a decent life before it reaches my plate. Game beasts have at least roamed free in their natural habitat, and for all intents and purposes, squirrel is game.

So, for those people, who are meat-eaters, who say that it’s cruel to encase poor Mr Nutkins in pastry, I’m asking, why do they think it’s any different for the squirrel than for, let’s say, the pheasant?
Arguments against consuming it have been, that it’s nothing more than a rodent and we shouldn’t eat things like rats – although rabbits aren't rodents, they're quite similar and have been perfectly acceptable sources of protein and appear on the menus of the best restaurants.
That said, most of those people probably don’t, or won’t eat rabbit either…

I’m not advocating the mass slaughter of our fluffy little friends for the sake of a meal, but I’m certainly intrigued to find out what it tastes like. But no, I’m not rushing out to buy the aforementioned pasty, I mean, what if I don’t like it, or I bottle out just as I go to take the first bite!

If you wish to read the fully fleshed out stories from the press, with added reader comments:
Metro
The Guardian

Photo: everystockphoto.com