To be clear this is not a blog about cooking or eating squirrel. While I understand it can be done in a tasty manner it is not something I have yet experienced nor do I intend to catch and cook one myself. Although I do know someone who accidentally discovered that catching a squirrel using peanut butter can lead to squirrel asphyxiation and they are now collecting a number of peanut butter killed squirrels in their freezer for some yet to be determined purpose. Seriously. Instead this post is more about the relationship with squirrels when you have bird feeders and gardens.
In general there seems to be three types of relationships: constant war, resigned acceptance, and loving encouragement. The relationship can transition from status to status so I am not sure if these really are true relationships or just phases like the five phases of grief.
When we were new home owners with our very first yard and the opportunity to finally have bird feeders we started somewhere between war and resigned acceptance. We tried greasing the hooks on which our bird feeders hung but were not in a location where we could hang feeders out of reach of tree limbs so the squirrels either slid down the hangers or simply reached out and pulled the feeder to them. We would bang on the window and run out on the deck yelling only to watch the squirrels return as soon as we came back inside. After a while they simply looked at us with “what you gonna do” looks on their punk little faces.
Then my in-laws gave us a twirl-a-squirrel. It is a device that when the weight on the feeder exceeds a certain level it starts making an alarm noise and spins. It spins in one direction for almost two minutes then reverses and repeats for what ends up being a very wild ride for squirrels. With this device I actually began encouraging the squirrels to get on the feeder simply to watch their skill levels. Squirrel starts with all four paws clinging, then as the rotational force increases suddenly one paw lets go, then another, and so on. I have seen squirrels clinging with two paws on one side, clinging with just front paws and my favorite, desperately hanging on with back paws. Even better is when it stops and the ones who have managed to hold on are then tortured by Brad. He waits till it stops and then yells and runs at them. They are so dizzy you can see their heads wobble as they try to figure out how to run up a tree to get away from the deranged home owner. So this device actually kept the squirrels from knocking down the feeder or eating significant amounts of bird seed.
Well, by this point I felt bad for the squirrels and actually got them their own feeder. It was one of those that attaches to the side of the tree and they have their own perch and can open and close the lid to access the food inside. We had fun with this, too. More than once when going to refill this feeder right as I reached for the lid out would pop a squirrel who had decided to nap inside the bin after gorging. And then there were the really creepy encounters where we would hear a constant banging noise and look out the window to see a squirrel repeatedly opening and closing the lid of the empty feeder while staring menacingly at the house. Pretty sure he was the same one that gave us the “what you gonna do” looks.
So I guess we had actually transitioned to somewhere between resigned acceptance and loving encouragement. We even started naming squirrels for a while based on looks or personality: Patches, No Ears, Psycho Punk, Harold…
All this changed again when we started our first vegetable garden. I had anxiously awaited our very first homegrown vine ripe tomatoes. I picked the very first one so excited to see we had three more that would be perfect in another day’s time. That next day I went to harvest my perfectly grown tomatoes and all three had bites taken out of them! Same thing happened to the very first roma tomato that ripened and I had had enough. It was back to war with the squirrels.
Numerous tips were provided on how to handle the situation. Pellet and BB guns, setting my in-door only cats upon them, using red pepper on everything, and consulting with the animal trapper guru were all suggested ideas. Recall the peanut butter asphyxiated frozen squirrels? I decided I would have to take a more humane approach; after all we had named the darn rodents. So I finally strung a clothes line across the top of my raised bed garden and draped bird netting over it. I then “secured” the netting to the ground with large rocks and tucked the ends of the netting inside itself. I then poured a 3 inch wide border of “critter ridder”, which turned out to be a very expensive bottle of black and red pepper (should have read ingredients and just bought dry pepper in bulk), around the base of the raised bed.
And then I waited. I waited anxiously because worse than the squirrels tasting my tomatoes would be finding some poor critter trapped inside the netting that would end up in traumatizing both the animal and me and likely put me off doing any future gardens. So I awaited and checked the garden every day. No trapped critters and rapidly ripening tomatoes was all I found. Finally, I harvested one, then two more roma tomatoes. I think I may have beaten them for now but until I have harvested more than the squirrels ruined I cannot count this as victory. Time will tell.
Now does anyone have ideas on how to prepare peanut butter stuffed frozen squirrel?
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