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Saturday, October 05, 2013

The War Against the Squirrels

My wife has been fighting the most wily and dangerous enemy of her gardening career.  She woke up with a cold on Monday morning, feeling sick and coughing. But that was a minor nuisance compared to the calamity that struck later in the day.  The squirrels had gotten into her raised bed and destroyed much of it, including most of the recently planted seeds and some of the younger plants. Kristin had been using Cayenne pepper flakes to keep the squirrels out, but apparently one of them has developed a taste for it.  She threw the closest thing at hand at it (my cell phone charger) when she saw it in her garden, but by then the damage had been done.

The damage from day two of the great squirrel war. The red is from the now ineffective Cayenne pepper.
Since then, she and the squirrels have been dueling.  She's been trying something different every day, inspired by the dark secrets found in the murky depths of the Internet, or possibly just in her cold-drug-addled brain.  She's tried throwing rocks, she's tried shooting foam discs, she's tried garlic and chicken wire and most recently, ghosts.

Spooky ghosts to frighten squirrels
She's determined to drive the squirrels away, though I worry that she'll make them so accustomed to the spicy, garlicky food and spooky ambiance that they'll never eat at a bland, regular garden again.

Update (10/5/2013): One more photo:
Ghosts from above!

3 comments:

  1. I set up a bird feeder this summer because we have some very colorful birds. They loved the seed I put out as did the squirrels. At first they were satisfied with what fell on the ground but after a time one or two brave souls found a way to get at the feeder itself. I bought one of those bowl things you put on the pole to guard against squirrels but all it did was give them a platform to stand on. So I went commando. I needed to practice my shooting anyway, and since bullets are so expensive and scarce I bought a BB gun. Don't worry, I never managed to hit any. And after a while they would taunt me on the feeder, waiting for the shot, which always missed. The only way I could get rid of the pests was to stop filling the feeder. Now no one comes around.

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  2. My dad suggested a pellet gun and sent a link to a bunch of squirrel recipes. But I'm not sure the neighbors and police here in urban Massachusetts would take kindly to me leaning out the upstairs windows with any sort of gun. Also, I'm a terrible shot and am afraid I might hit the neighbor's cat or windows.

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  3. Ha, ha, great minds think alike. But you're right, shooting anything from an upper window, in Mass. could get you shot or worse. (as for the cat, hey, it shouldn't have been in the garden). So, how about poison?

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