<p>Sigh, I have given up the battle. This year was horrible for critter damage. Other years I had tomatoes, zucchini, green beans, but each year is less successful. The last blow was last month’s foot off the ground total clipping of my year old clematis outside the garage door where I routinely take the dog out- it was just about to unfold new blooms, too. The catmint surrounding it was untouched. At least the stems have resprouted. As they say- there’s always next year (no more vegetables on the retaining wall- flowers only, and maybe a tomato plant…).</p>
<p>I accidentally guillotined my clematis last year, too, while battling virginia creeper. So frustrating!</p>
<p>DH calls me Dr. Death in the Garden.</p>
<p>Killer Kitty = No Moles :-)</p>
<p>We had a huge mole wreaking havock in my garden a few years ago until the dog got him. After that, his space was taken over some smaller critters which were much more careful. Neither the dog nor trapping worked. H did two things: gassed them with carbon dioxide by stuffing dry ice down their tunnels and plugging the openings. He also created a “gopher earthquake” by tamping the soil in the area of their activity (moles and gophers do not like soil vibrations). I do not know what ended up working, but it looks like they had packed and left.</p>
<p>We had some impressive victories on this year’s battlefield! The Great Wall of Chickenwire held the bunnies out of the garden, and the live animal traps performed well. H did the math, and he’s caught and relocated 2 possums, 3 squirrels, 11 bunnies, and 5 rats :eek:</p>
<p>A very good year!!! </p>
<p>The squirrels continue to eat all of our walnuts - but the gophers remain outside the yard. Caught only three this year… </p>
<p>Anyone with ideas for keeping squirrels out of walnut trees?</p>
<p>Is there any truth to the old tale that placing human hair in a mole or gopher hole will drive them away? The old-timer in my childhood neighborhood told us squirts that the critters couldn’t stand the smell of human hair, so he collected the stuff from his barber buddy whenever a gopher war broke out.</p>
<p>By the way Bunsen, as I recall from my childhood days running roughshod through the woods of South Seattle, those 4-legged things were NOT bunnies! They were miserable little jack rabbits. We finally got rid of them by clearing the woods for a new subdivision. LOL.</p>
<p>LW, I’m not sure about the human hair (never tried it because it just sounds gross), but a couple of pounds of dry ice that H shoved down their gopher tunnels gassed the little buggers pretty well.</p>
<p>well thats one thing I don’t have a problem with in Ballard, although my H yesterday got a shock when he went to work down by the Duwamish river , his car has been having electrical issues and he opened up the hood at lunch to check for loose wires.
A rattus rattus was curled up on the engine- !
I expect they both were kind of shocked ;)</p>
<p>I think the electrical fence is a fine idea. And I’m sure you can find a good recipe for squirrel stew. My father loved it. Of course, he also liked bear and rattlesnake. (The family farm was electrified until 1929, when he was 21. It was a different world.)</p>
<p>I sympathize on the dry ice… Me, I once poured a cup of bleach… and a cup of ammonia… down a woodchuck hole. </p>
<p>I grow lettuce in a big pot on the deck rather than put it in the garden, ditto with snow peas. That seems to take care of the bunnies and the slugs. The only thing that ever went after my tomatoes were the aforementioned woodchucks, but that was in Massachusetts.</p>
<p>I am actually contemplating planting corn this year, even though everyone I know has had their crop eaten by raccoons… I guess we’ll see. Sometimes I’m really glad there’s a grocery store around the corner.</p>
<p>Dmd77, my mother was farm girl raised in Dixie in the 1950s. When I told her once that one of my grad school classmates bragged about hunting squirrels for supper, she gagged and said it was mostly the oddballs in the county who did that sort of thing. LOL.</p>
<p>Of course, some would laugh at my childhood adventures of fishing [by hand] for crawdads at the mouth of the Cedar River near the Boeing plant. But crawdads aren’t a garden pest, are they?</p>
<p>nope don’t chew on your squashes</p>
<p>When I lived on Cottage Lake, we used to get crawdads from under our dock and when we lived in south Bellevue we used to row around Kelsey Creek and fish for bass, but they’re not garden pests:)</p>
<p>LakeWashington: thanks for the laugh. My father was born and raised in Independence, Missouri (on the family farm, just down the street from the Trumans–it burned in the '70s and was donated to the city for use as a park) but always said he was going to retire to the Ozarks. In the end, he and my mother never left Philadelphia. But he definitely had a country-boy streak that he liked to cultivate.</p>
<p>EK, I wouldn’t fish for anything in Cottage Lake now 
- it would not be safe even for the cat.</p>
<p>Is crawdad the same as crawfish? I have no luck catching squirrels. Somehow they managed to eat the carrots and not get caught.</p>
<p>EK, I wouldn’t fish for anything in Cottage Lake now - it would not be safe even for the cat.</p>
<p>oh that is so sad- it used to be beautiful there
This was back when we had one blinking stop light.
;)</p>
<p>yes crayfish and crawdads are the same thing.</p>
<p>DMD my mom was born in Albany and her family moved to McFall, which is about 70 miles outside of Independence.
( They moved to Seattle during/after? WWII but our family still has farms in that area)</p>
<p>I never liked the word “crayfish.” It sounds both shi-shi and too scientific at the same time. Now a ‘crawdad’ is something that boy, in cut-offs and perhaps shirtless on a summer day, goes hunting after with some ethusiasm!!!</p>