How do you decline a group invite on Facebook?

One of my FB friends (from high school, whom I remember almost not at all from then, but I do enjoy some of his FB posts) invited me to join a group. I had even liked a few of the groups’ posts when they showed up in my news feed. It’s a public group, 1.2 million members. Now every one of their posts that’s on my newsfeed has at the top “(friend’s name) has invited you to join this group”, and I think I’m seeing far more of their posts since I’ve been invited.

How do I decline? (The group is called Critters and posts are mainly pictures of animals.)

I think you just hit ‘Ignore’