On Thu, 27 May 2004 21:14:26 -0400, "Ray Drouillard"
wrote:


"Ignoramus4443" wrote in message
...

[...]

Second, can something be done about squirrels.

We used to have a big tomcat who enjoyed catching and eating squirrels.


Ray



I had a sweetheart apricot that had an edible pit, squirrels cut them
all off while they were still green.

My dad had a walnut tree that he kept a bunch of metal around the
trunk and the squirrels would jump up and over it and they would use
anything semin close to launch themselves up the tree.

Unless you have a LOT of area to plant (in hope of getting a nut or
two) with lots of nuts, or you live far enough from town with a
vacant area between you and the neighbors. and so, basically, get a
heard of maine coon cats to patrol the area, some squirrel catching
hawks, and if shooting is allowed post guards with rifles, LOL Or
save yourself a lot of aggravation and high blood pressure, buy your
nuts, and plant something that squirrels don't care too much about...
although.. I've been finding that they've been behaving oddly and
doing things they've not done in the previous two decades.. like no
birds bothered my grapes for 15 years, then suddenly..they started
in!! Until one year, I didn't get them pruned, and they had an
exceptionally heavy crop, and they ripened late... that meant that
generation of young birds were not taught to eat my grapes that year.
As such, the following year, I didn't have birds eating my grapes!
But, the squirrels have taken up grape eating! I'd never had
squirrels eat fruit before, except in the case of early ripening
peaches, EVERYTHING ate them, finches peck them to the pits, squirrels
knock them off the tree.

Squirrels are annoying to gardeners who want to grow nuts or small
fruits. They pick my strawberries, dig in the planters, they will
undoubtedly pick my raspberries when they ripen if they can reach
them. They went from annoying .. to EVIL when one was living in my
attic, and she decided that my wiring was a danger to her young and
was grabbing onto it and just started whaling away .. jerking and
bouncing it up and down. I could hear the wire slapping up and down
on the floor of a section of the attic that *had* a floor, and we had
to evict her an her young, and then took #10 institutional sized cans
and opened top and bottoms, cut down the seam with tin snips and a
friend molded the metal around the eaves to close off the squirrels
access into my attic!!

There is no winning in our town with squirrels if you kill one ..
fifteen try to move into its territory, seriously, so you can't kill
them all. Plus if you try and a squirrel feeding nutty neighbor finds
out they'll turn you in, and that's what happened with my Dad, so he
cut the walnut tree down! He'd tried every other way to keep them out
of the tree and it was just not worth the effort. Although, he didn't
make the collar that would be like the top of a funnel .. in shape to
keep them from jumping up into the limbs..it's cost prohibitive to
most folks to have stuff like that fabricated. I'm poor, and dad
wasn't rich either.

Good luck!!

Janice