the funniest and best thing i’ve learned while doing research for this shakespeare project is that in the late 19th century, there was this group called the american acclimatization society and their thing was bringing european plants and animals to the u.s. so one member was this guy named eugene schieffelin and he was like obsessed with shakespeare, so he went, “hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we tracked down EVERY SPECIES OF BIRD SHAKESPEARE EVER MENTIONED and brought them ALL to America” so he rounded up like a hundred European starlings and released them in central park, and now there are upwards of 200 million starlings in North America and they cause around $1 billion worth of damage to crops every year, all because shakespeare mentioned them exactly ONCE in Henry IV part 1
#the shakespeare fandom is wild
Yes. Yes we are.
And then like twenty years later, because New Yorkers apparently HADN’T LEARNED ANYTHING FROM THIS MISTAKE…
Some people decided that Stanley Park in Vancouver just wasn’t a fun enough park without some cool squirrel like those grey squirrels hanging around in Central Park, and SHIPPED US A BUNCH OF SQUIRRELS AS A PRESENT.
Which the people of Vancouver responded with ‘wow, great idea, thanks!’ and then released the squirrels.
The Eastern Grey Squirrel is now one of the most pervasive invasive species in BC, and has totally decimated the population of native red squirrels, both by out-competing them for food resources and EATING THEIR BABIES.