The Squirrel Problem
They’re vegetarian rats, basically. Eat bulbs, empty birdfeeders, gnaw through attic walls to make smelly nests, from which they sally forth to eat the insulation from electric wires. Absolute proof – if we needed any – that good looks can get you a pass on a lot of bad behavior. If they had rat tails instead of those bottle brushes and did not have the habit of sitting up and eating with paw-hands, and
if the babies weren’t so damn cute, we’d be a lot farther ahead in squirrel eradication.
And don’t talk to me about dispersing seeds. If I find one more “volunteer ” black walnut with a taproot halfway to China…
Right. So what did we do with this little pair, scarcely larger than the violet leaves, happily playing for half an hour oblivious of dangerous humans only 10 feet away? We ooed and ah’d and elbowed each other and I ran out in my nightie to get photographs.
Bah, Humbug.
We all know the metal baffle does nothing. Taking down the feeder just sets them into the borders to nibble new buds. Any suggestions?
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Cats. Lots of them.
We have plenty of squirrels, but with 7 cats, at least one is on duty in the garden most of the time.
They can’t catch the squirrels, but they do run them off.
Leigh,
7 cats! I’ll bet they repel the squirrels. We only have one that goes outdoors and he doesn’t seem to have any effect. On squirrels, anyway. He’s death on rabbits, but there are so many of them – at least this year – that he can’t really keep up.
And he does occasionally mistake a newly seeded row for a litterbox. I shudder to think what 7 could do