This spring, trendy gastropub The Jugged Hare have put crispy bacon croquettes with hazelnut mayonnaise on the menu. There's a very special ingredient: squirrel.
Seeing the furry rodent on restaurant menus is not a novelty (although using that description does make it sound a lot less appetising). Upmarket Indian eatery The Cinnamon Club have done squirrel curry in the past, and Little Jack Horner's sell squirrel pies at farmers' markets around London. The meat tastes similar to rabbit, but a little sweeter, and it's leaner and therefore healthier than pork or beef.
Of course the only squirrels restaurants will serve up are grey ones, because many see them as vermin due to their part in wiping out the native red squirrel population. It's not that they're evil - they were introduced to Britain by wealthy people coming back from North America, who saw them as a fashionable addition to their gardens. Unfortunately they can contract a disease that poor red squirrels are not immune to, hence their decline.
There's been a culling programme in place for several years, so the argument goes that if they are being killed, why not eat them? Some go as far as saying that a dinner of squirrel is an ethical one, as they're plentiful and low on food miles.
Anti-speciesists state that if you eat rabbit there isn't much of a difference to eating squirrel, as if you eat one animal you can't make a moral distinction between others.
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