"nutso fasst" wrote in message . com...
We've got an overpopulation of fox squirrels in the neighborhood, with at
least five nests in our backyard alone. The squirrels have always gone after
our fruit, but in the last few years they have begun stripping entire
treesful before it fully ripens. We have walnut trees and I don't begrudge
them walnuts, but the loss of oranges, persimmons, pomegranates, plums and
apricots ****es me off. Now we have a new problem: they are stripping the
bark off elm and chinese silk trees and eating the new leaf shoots off the
apricots. Peaceful coexistence is ending. I'm getting a slingshot and
looking for squirrel recipes. But I wonder about this bark-eating behavior,
which I never noticed or heard of before. It's not like these guys are
starving--they're some of the plumpest squirrels I've ever seen. Is this
usual behavior?

nf

That is normal behavior for a dense population of squirrels. Specially
in late winter, they have no other food. If their caches are raided,
or the winter was harsh, they will eat cambium. I too have very many
(thanks to a frontyard of oak and hickory trees, and a backyard of
maple and elm trees - all major food sources). At this time, they
definitely chew on the twigs of a weeping mulberry (silk tree) outside
my kitchen. In april, they raid my mushroom patch and eat the shiitake
(which are somewhat sweet). If I had your collection of trees, I would
try to eliminate them. They will not touch your fruit trees when the
elms are making seeds, or during walnut season, but they need to
survive in between. I think that if you had no walnuts or elms the
population would ultimately crash, or at least less squirrels would be
moving in as you catch them.