<p>Actually, I think the squirrels are kinda cute (although I acknowledge that they can be pests). In the “count your blessings/it could be worse department,” my niece, who lives in Boulder, Colorado, awoke on a Sunday morning a few weeks ago, came downstairs, made coffee, opened the sliding glass door onto her deck, walked out, and came face to face with a full grown mountain lion which flattened its ears, snarled at her and then turned and strolled away at a rather leisurely pace – now THAT puts the squirrel problem in perspective. Needless to say, she’s rethinking coffee on the deck.</p>
<p>^^ That’s scary. We’ve had some mountain lions around here as well including some attacks.</p>
<p>^ I agree, pretty scary. Still, I understand that mountain lion attacks on humans are quite rare – usually the big cats turn and run off.</p>
<p>Vicious squirrels… haha.</p>
<p>I was attacked by a gopher once - seriously. I was wearing flip-flops and climbing down from a ladder in the yard when I suddenly felt something on the arch of my foot. I looked down and saw a brown furry thing hanging off of it. After kicking my foot somewhat wildly it fell off and stood there staring me down. Thinking back to my friend as a kid who picked up a ground squirrel, got bit, let go of the ground squirrel, squirrel ran away, kid gets rabies shots with a 3 foot needle in his stomach, I reached for a cinder block and squished the gopher in an effort to not receive my friend’s consequences. I then examined my foot and discovered it didn’t actually break the skin or draw blood and was quite relieved.</p>
<p>We really need to be careful with wildlife because we’re often no match for a mountain lion, or ground squirrel, or…gopher!</p>
<p>Aahh, you mentioned rabies shots! When my son was four he stuck his head in a park trash can to get a closer look at the cute raccoon he saw jump into it. Raccoon propelled himself out of the can by way of my son’s head, scratching his scalp. Weeks of rabies shots. (This was in Massachusetts, where a large fraction of the raccoon population was indeed rabid.)</p>
<p>With regard to my earlier post, I didn’t almost “feint”, I almost “fainted” at the encounter with a large bear.</p>
<p>My dad traps squirrels in his backyard. Then he shoots them with a BB gun.
He has a tally sheet on the side of his refrigerator–killed over 100 in the last
18 months (and a lot more before he started counting). And they keep on coming.</p>
<p>A friend of mine was told by a neighbor (in-town location) that he had been very successful at trapping the squirrels in his yard of late. Then, shortly afterwards he invited her and the family over for a cookout. </p>
<p>Yep, it was squirrel meat.</p>
<p>Having coffee on the deck and I hear those strange chirping noises that squirrels make. I look up and sure enough, there’s a squirrel hanging over the roof - right over my head. Making big noise and looking sort of scary. I was thinking he might jump - so I grabbed my coffee and went in the house. We now call him “psycho squirrel” and keep an eye out for him.
Some think these guys are cute but I really don’t care for the creatures…rats without tails as far as I’m concerned.</p>
<p>We’ve noticed many more busy squirrels than usual. And they do seem more agressive. I wonder if this means we are going to have a harsh winter? </p>
<p>We also saw an unusual (for us) black squirrel. Grey squirrels are more typical here.</p>
<p>I’m at peace with any animal that stays outside. I even negotiated a settlement with the filthy rotten deer that ate my rosebushes – I pulled out all 20 bushes and replaced them with gardening cloth covered by 3 inches of bark mulch.</p>
<p>But.</p>
<p>If they come in the house, they die. My neighbor and friend is a professional exterminator and is more than happy to help me eliminate every non-human mammal in my house.</p>
<p>And, yeah, we’ve had mice, tree rats, and squirrels in the attic. They die in the traps and leave the house in nice white trash bags. Happy, happy, joy, joy.</p>
<p>Gotta hate those bushy-tailed rats and other pests! A squirrel bit into every single peach on my tree this summer before disappearing. Boy, was I steamed! Then a bigger problem appeared. My yard was attacked by hordes of wild rabbits, and did they mow down every vegetable in my garden! The carnage happened in a matter of one night. Only tomato plants survived, but japanese eggplants, squash, cucumbers and strawberry plants were gone, only stem stubs were left sticking out of the ground. These bunnied are so bold, even the neighborhood dogs do not scare them. You’d think there is plenty of grass and dandelions on the sides of the roads and in the horse pastures here for them to feast on! I tried to set traps, but to no success. Caught a wood rat once, and removed th traps alltogether after some stupid bird got trapped (luckily, it was not injured). The dogs have no interest in the rabbits, and H thinks they are “cute”. I, on the other hand, feel like Elmer Fudd!</p>
<p>My father-the-former-farm boy-and-retired-electrical-engineer had trouble with moles burrowing under his organic garden to eat the earthworms that thrive in his terrific soil. The moles don’t eat vegetables but they DO burrow under them and destroy their roots. My father loves his garden and has the willingness to control pests of any former farm boy. He also has the knowledge of an engineer.</p>
<p>I won’t go into the details, but he rigged up a very high voltage, low current power supply to a series of large-bore electrical conductors buried under the soil of his garden. He runs it several hours a day and reports that not only did rid his garden of moles, the worms don’t seem to mind, and that he had no other vegetable-eating critters this summer – including deer. He is about twice as pleased and smug as he would be if he just doubled the money in his retirement account.</p>
<p>WashDad, thanks for the tip! I found that moles do not like if I pound the ground around the beds with a piece of 4X4 once in a while. Apparently, vibrations of the ground are disturbing to them, and they leave. H once gassed a mole by sticking a pound or two of dry ice into the holes and packing them with rocks. Dry ice is solid carbon dioxide, and when it evaporates, the released gas is denser than air, so it lingers in the mole tunnels and is supposed to suffocate the critters. I do not know if the idea worked, but the mole was gone after this procedure!</p>
<p>I was tempted to buy an electric fence for my vegetable beds, but thought $70 a bed at Lowes’ was too much. H promised to rig something up, but never got to it. Anyway, the issue is moot until next spring. But then, bunnies beware!</p>
<p>We are in a situation with large Red Oaks in the front and back yard so ALL the wildlife visit us. Did you known that Scarlet and Red Oaks provide fatty acorns necessary to last a squirrel through the winter while Chestnut , Swamp and other Oaks are high in carbohydrates and of less value? My iritation is not with the squirrels. My grip is the field mice and blue jays. I love blue jays but what happens is if they have an ample food source they reproduce into large flocks and become NOISY.Gheesh, if birds are descendants of the dinosaurs BLUE JAYS are a prime example of their success and stupidity!</p>
<p>Springfield Mom…I forgot about the tomatoes, probably because I’d given up on them. Earlier in the summer, I could stand at my window and watch a squirrel perched in my cherry tomato plant – casually picking off the green ones and dropping them to the ground, clearing the way to the perfectly ripe ones. One day I had four almost-perfectly-ripe larger tomatoes…went out the next day to pick them and they were all gone. The nerve! Supposedly squirrel-proof bird feeder (how many times have we heard that?!) arrived in the mail today.</p>
<p>I especially hate the ones that have the audacity to sit on my porch and eat my tomotoes. The nerve of them… :rolleyes:</p>
<p>
I remember seeing that cartoon!</p>
<p>Re: WashDad–Anyone else thinking of Caddyshack?</p>
<p>Your dad sounds a lot like my dad (retired engineer).</p>
<p>I am waiting for Garrison Keillor to start narrating this thread.</p>