To some people they are cuddly creatures that can become tame enough to nibble endearingly out of your hand. But to people who feed wild birds in their gardens, grey squirrels are crafty and acrobatic thieves. And to the native British red squirrel they simply mean extinction.
But there was another reason I spent £30 on a squirrel trap this spring. Almost every time I went into my chicken shed a squirrel shot out through the door or a hole at the top of the stone wall - since blocked. I was fed up enough with them stealing from the wild birds' winter rations, let alone eating their fill of the expensive organic mixed corn and pellets we feed our chickens.
I caught three, donned a tough pair of gloves to protect my hands from their vicious bite. and dispatched them to a better place. I later learned I had done the right thing. Anyone trappijng a grey squirrel is legally obliged to kill it.
My wife Janet suggested acting humanely and setting them loose somewhere else, but I didn't want to visit the pests on anyone, and I know there are red squirrels in nearby Brechfa forest, clinging on in the face of the of what my daughter describes as the North American tree rat.
The grey squirrel was introduced to this country in the 1880s from North America, and is the only squirrel many people have ever seen. It is now on the UN list of the hundred most invasive species and has been a disaster for the native red, because the grey carries a pox that kills the red.
Reds are now restricted to pitifully few parts of Britain, including Anglesey, where a concerted programme of culling greys has lifted a severely endangered population that numbered only 40 in 1998.
The RSCPA thinks culling grey squirrel is unethical. Once again Britain's largest animal charity is unable to see the wider implications of allowing pests and predators to multiply without restraint. Treating destructive wildlife as cuddly animals might win friends among a population largely ignorant of rural ways. But it's not ethical to stand aside and watch the extinction of a native species.
The government-funded Red Squirrel Protection Project, a last-ditch effort to save the red squirrel in north-east England, has trapped and killed 17,800 since December, 2006, and come up with an answer to the disposal problem: eat them. It apparently tastes sweet, like a cross between lamb and duck. Maybe I'll try it some time.