"I'm a red squirrel but I don't live in a tree. Once we had a forest and enough trees to share with everybody. In it we hunted, buried and gnawed nuts and looked for more. A typical healthy red squirrel's life. When the grays came we asked if we could keep some of the trees rather than lose them all. But that was racist, the grays said. They said we didn't have the right. I'm just a red squirrel without a tree."

That's my pretty crappy translation of one of Robin Llywelyn's oddments of micro-fiction. It seems the gray squirrel may now be culled to save the endangered native red population. This cull is necessary because you can't reason with the gray squirrel; it doesn't know the harm it's doing, wiping out all those red squirrels .

But you can reason with people. If we're concerned enough to cull thousands of squirrels in the name of variety, surely we can find it in our hearts to save a thousand year old language and culture that doesn't need any culling to survive, just a change in attitudes. That way, I suppose, no squirrel is without a tree.

(Note: I'm moving home at the moment so, yes, a patronisingly simplistic tale about squirrels is the best I could muster. The Welsh word for squirrel is 'wiwer', btw.)