"garden virgin" - wrote:

First there was one, now there's four & they are making a right mess in
the garden & chasing away blackbirds from the garden who are doing a great
job in keeping insects & slugs under control. One of the blasted squirrel
attacked a wood pigeon, i saw a plume of feathers flying & the pigeon had
a nasty head wound. Are squirrels normally this aggressive? and is there
any way of controlling the squirrels(grey) short of shooting them! As far
as i know... these are not crack cocaine addicted squirrles like the ones
reported in the news but they are still a real menace!

Any advice on how to keep them out of the garden would be greatly
appreciated, i'm tempted to catch/trap them & put collars with bells on
them, that way i'd know when they're around.

The simple answer is shoot them torturing them with chillies or trapping
them causes stress to them a quick blast with an air rifle and you get a
clean kill. They are eaten and served up in restaurants as flightless
partridge to jazz the name up. Personally i put up with the odd one that
shows up but my cat tends to keep the bugger away and being bright white
the cat never gets a shot at the birds so the birds stay happy too.