YOU’VE probably read in the Examiner about the deterrent effect of lion poo.

If you scatter it in your garden, your ordinary domestic cats won’t come near because they’re fooled into thinking one of the Big Guys has claimed the territory.

The reasons I haven’t tried this in my garden are two fold.

First, there are no lions handy.

Second, what a lion leaves behind is actually everything a pussycat leaves behind, times ten.

Why would you want to make things ten times worse to make them one time better?

If you had a squirrel infestation, could you drive them away by tucking a dollop of giant three-toed sloth muck into the rose-bed?

Squirrels don’t infest my garden so I can afford to be fairly tolerant of them.

They limit their annoying tactics to dropping half-eaten pine cones and beech mast on my head as I take my morning constitutional.

In fact, I’ve come to regard them as good luck.

I once counted 17 in a 40-minute walk. I’ve no doubt several doubled back just to boost the numbers – one squirrel looks pretty much the same as another, I admit – but I seem to remember that was a good day.

A £10 lottery win, a lollipop that dropped on the floor stick downwards and a summer pudding for supper.

It doesn’t get much better than that.

I dread the days I don’t see any squirrels at all. I was looking so hard one day I walked slap into a low branch and stumbled backwards into a bramble patch.

How’s that for bad luck?