Sure pappy. Buy a small amount of plaster of paris at a craft store, and a jar of crunchy peanut butter at the supermarket. (Plaster of Paris is calcium sulfate.) Sit down at the kitchen table and blend about 1/2 cup of each ingredient together in a cereal bowl with a fork. It may take 15 minutes or so to thoroughly blend the ingredients, but it can be done. It usually ends up a little dry, so add a little vegetable oil and re-mix until it is the consistency of stiff cookie dough.

Take your bowl of mix out in the yard, and start making small bonbons with your fingers. Place them on spots like fenceposts, the crotches of small trees, etc. The suggested amounts should make about 2 dozen bonbons.

If you put the bonbons out in late afternoon, most of them will be gone by late the following morning. So will the squirrels. Your neighbors will not have a clue about what happened, since the squirrels simply disappear. If the squirrels move in from elsewhere after a few weeks, mix up another batch.

Please don't ask how this works. That's not my department. But it does work, and I have been using this method for several years, whenever the squirrel population builds up to impossible levels. This has been a good acorn year, and the population is relatively high. When I can look out in the yard and see more than a half-dozen squirrels simultaneously, that's when I get out a cereal bowl and start mixing.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Pappy, one other thing I would add is do the "controlling" when the squirrels have not already found your favorite fruits. Once they have found a big yummy crop they are impossible to deter from it -- you are too late. I have found the winter months are the time to shrink the squirrel population, I aim to clear them out completely by March. This is because they have more limited sources of food and will go for the bonbons or traps or whatever bait you set. All the way through when the mulberry crop comes in here they don't have much to eat and are easy to bait.

I personally have not had much luck with bonbons, but the bonbons were up against peaches and the squirrels chose peaches every time. In the winter they may work well, and I am now thinking I will whip up a batch to give it a go. There are also various traps which you may have some luck with. My havahart traps work OK when there is no tempting source of food (but, my dog tries to get the bait so I now need to build a stand for them so she is not setting them off). You will have a live squirrel on your hands which you can either relocate far away depending on your local laws, shoot, or drown. I have tried several kinds of lethal traps and while I have caught squirrels, none of them work reliably (snare, Kania, tube traps). Note that you do not need to send an advertisement to your neighbors that you are trapping. You can put a baited trap out of sight and a hungry squirrel will find it. My main control against squirrels is the pellet gun.

Scott

Thank you Don, and Scott, Incidently Don, I quoted you on another Squirrel site so you have helped others as well as me. Hurricane IKE has reduced the squirrels around here, but I will take Scott's advice and start now , and continue til after the fruiting season next year. I was thinking of plastering them about 4' high on the bark of the pines and pecans, and see if that would work.
I used plastic paper wrappers from my daily delivered newspapers to put rat poison in, I dropped the poison in the bottom, and tied the top closed to make it waterproof,and just tossed them around, and they disappeared, so I don't know which varmint ate them, but I didn't see any squirrels up until we evacuated from IKE.

Hi,

Not trying to hijack this post - but should the bon bons work for voles or any other animals? The squirels disappeared great with the bon bons - but I have voles also. The bon bons are disappearing but the voles are still there (placed the bon bons right at the little enterance to where I am almost certain they live). Do I just need to keep making bon bons - or will this not work on voles?

Thanks!

Tvalenti:

I have never considered bonbons for voles, and have no reason to hold an opinion. However, I have had voles too, and deal with them by placing rat/mouse poison pellets directly into their holes. Individual voles may not consume a volume of bonbons sufficient to really affect them, although the bonbons may disappear because there are many voles.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Don, the only thing I could find about plaster of Paris that could be harmful, is that it sets up (hardens) fast, and heats up too. One girl in Briton lost fingers by trying to make a plaster cast of her hand, as it burned her severely.
So, it would appear that you need a sufficient amount to either burn out the stomach, or to clog the intestines, or possibly both.
Would a sphere about the diameter of a quarter be about right?

pappy_r,
It's already set by the time the squirrels eat it and once set the chemical process that sets it is done and it does not reset. It is not heat or impaction.

The best guess I've seen is that it causes a drastic imbalance in the body which causes catastrophic organ failure.
If it relied on impacting bowels you would see a lot of sick squirrels around and it's been reported that they are instantly gone. So they either get very sick very quickly or they quickly die.

As for the burns, it sounds like a case of not getting the whole story to me. I read the BBC article and it was pretty cryptic.

1. What about your / the neighbor's pets?
2. What about the legal implications if someone finds out what you are doing?

Myk:

Let's not confuse things here with half-truths. PoP balls are not set up when the squirrels eat them, unless they have been previously combined with moisture. PoP generates heat when setting up, just as portland cement does. You would not set them out on a rainy day.

The British story does not sound credible. PoP is weak and easy to remove as it is setting up, and is not very strong even when fully set. It would be easy to remove if you felt your fingers burning off.

Yes, balls the size of a quarter are about right. When you are making these gummy things with your fingers, they are not all going to be exactly the same, nor do they have to be.

Brandon: If you are concerned about your neighbor's pets, don't use them. I don't see an issue, since my well-fed pets are not going to eat these things, and I place them on fenceposts or places pets do not frequent. They are usually there less than 24 hours before the squirrels finish them. Legal implications? Again, if this concerns you don't use them. Legal implications obviously don't bother me much.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Something is just odd about the supposed or apparent lethality of Plaster of Paris. When wetted, PoP becomes gypsum. Neither PoP (calcium sulfate, without bound water) nor gypsum (same, hydrated) is very soluble, so some sort of calcium toxicity seems hard to understand, though hydrochloric acid, as in a human stomach, would turn some of it basically into dissolved calcium chloride and thus more available. But if that were lethal, then why not gypsum or ground limestone and peanut butter?

Well, I bought some PoP, at Lowe's, and it has some other stuff in it, like crystalline silica, and calcium carbonate, but it should do the job.
I don't care if they die , or just disappear, as long as they don't ruin my harvest.
Brandon, if the neighbors have pet squirrels, they should keep them inside. I have a dog on the premises, and I'll certainly make sure she doesn't have access to my bon bons.
If the resident skunks want to try them, we will miss the occasional odor but I guess we can live with that. Do skunks climb trees?

Don, I wasn't considering using them. I think they are a really bad idea for a number of reasons, two of which I mentioned above. Unfortunately not everyone thinks these things through before acting. My post is only to remind those that haven't considered the implications that there are possible ethical, practical, and even legal ramifications involved with their use.

Advising people to do possible illegal things that could have rather serious side effects without some type of warning is irresponsible at best. I think it's important that the possible complications be presented for consideration. There are many that I didn't mention, but hopefully my post will at least indicate that careful consideration should be given before using "bonbons".

Pappy, you may have misread my post. I didn't mention anything about pet squirrels.

Brandon:

You are, as always, free to hold and express your own points of view. But please keep in mind that this is an entirely voluntary program, and there is no duress on anyone to try it.

It is a workable solution to a problem shared by many people who grow fruit and nuts, and I am personally convinced it is safe and well within the ethical limits of the average person.

If you have a better idea that would meet your legal and ethical requirements, please share it with us.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Don, there are numerous ideas about how to solve the problem. Anyone who's interested in them would have no problem finding them described in detail on the web as well as a number of postings on this website. Many people simply haven't spent the time to research the problem, and these are the same people that may not have taken the time to consider the negative implications of the bonbon method.

I made no claim of knowing the best solution; I only wanted to point out the need for consideration before trying the bonbon method. One can easily imagine many disastrous results of bonbon use. As with any method, the user should weigh the possibility of these negative outcomes against the possible benefits before taking action. Just as different methods vary in effectiveness, they also vary in possible drawbacks and dangerousness.

I've used the PB/PoP bonbons with success on multiple occasions, and have recommended them on numerous occasions to people who have suffered squirrel depredation - always with the caution to make certain that they are not placed in sites where they may be accessed by small children or beloved pets. Squirrels are neither of those, nor are they an endangered or threatened species, and they do not understand the concept of 'sharing'.
As a veterinarian, I am less concerned about the possibilities of secondary poisoning in other species, such as raptors, foxes, dogs/cats, etc., which might consume stricken or dead squirrels which have consumed the bonbons than would be the case for squirrels/voles which might have consumed most of the commercially-available anticoagulant or Vit-D analog rodenticides. It is my scientific opinion that a PB/PoP-terminated squirrel poses NO potential for secondary poisoning in predator species.
I suspect that there are few, if any(and probably none) regulations governing the use of two ordinary, legal household substances - peanut butter and Plaster-of-Paris as accoutrement in one's orchard.

Lucky, you bring up some good points, but I do see a couple of problems.

I won't delve into your point about about squirrels not understanding the concept of sharing except to say that that statement opens up a Texas size can of ugly worms.

Also your unfamiliarity with laws concerning intentional animal poisoning are a bit surprising to me. Because of things like intentional antifreeze poisoning, most areas do have laws that could be used to address these situations. Too many endangered wild animals, people's pets, and children have been killed for governments to ignore the issue.

Your point about secondary poisoning is very important and is a big plus on the side of bonbon use. This kind of factor should also be considered when picking a method to deal with pests.

Obviously you have given this some thought. If everyone thought things through to the degree you have and had the knowledge about things like secondary poisoning, I would have very little concern about whatever methods were being used. Unfortunately, you may be the exception instead of the rule.

Brandon:

Unless you are over 40, I have been researching the problem of how to deal with squirrels for more years than you have been alive. Yes, even before the internet. For more than several years, I have also noted Lucky's observations on this subject, to which I give considerable weight because of his veterinary training. I am not a scientist myself, but I can read, and have done so.

I understand that your fundamental objection is to killing squirrels by whatever method. That's fine, but it is not useful to people who want to do so. You have certainly made your point, and if you want the last word I invite you to take it, since I am out of this one.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Don,

Your assumptions are wrong! I'll just skip the age one because I ain't about to admit to being old. LOL

I'm not worried about how long YOU have been studying this method. I'm worried about those that haven't given it a second thought and, therefore, may have missed the potential downsides.

And finally, I NEVER said ANYTHING about being against killing squirrels. Where'd you ever get that idea??? I don't want to see the species extinct or anything, but my objections were to methodology and potential issues that should be considered before implementing action.

I've never tried the bonbon method, but I've had very good
success with the haverhart traps. Squirrels can't resist
sunflower seeds, and baiting with these seeds works every time. My critters will not touch peanut butter, or even the nuts themselves. I don't have to worry about neighbors or secondary poisoning of other animals or children for that matter. I keep a large garbage can filled with water, and drown the critters in it. I do get an ocassional bird in the trap, which I of course release immediately. I see no problem in eradicating squirrels, which are far from being endangered, and are basically tree rats. I've even called animal control, and they had no objection to what I do.
Ray

Jellyman,
I figured from the name and description they set up from the moisture or oil in the peanut butter.
In all my years of mixing plaster like stuff for lost wax casting I've found it to be pretty picky but having a bunch of vegetable oil in the mix has never come up.

So I mixed some up last night.
After I was sure it wasn't going to set with the peanut butter I mixed some water in some and sprayed water on the rest.
It simply doesn't set.

In the original mix it did get very sticky as I mixed so maybe that is "set" with oil. But I can't imagine that would be enough to block a squirrel that can eat wood and glue and everything else they go after.

gonebananas,
While squirrels may chew on a bone or antler they are not meat eaters where it would come up often.
Perhaps they are better at converting calcium than we are.

Maybe it is blockage and the amount they eat causes them discomfort quicker than a dog with bloat. But I don't see how oiled plaster would block them.

For my lunch break I read up on various state laws and I could not find a single state law which would prohibit the bonbons. See the link below for a good list of state animal laws mentioning poisoning. All of the poisoning provisions either exclude nuisance animals or only apply to "owned" animals and not wild animals. It is clear that in most states poisoning a neighbor's pet is illegal, and it also is illegal in some states to put poison in a place where a domesticated animal may eat it.

Scott

Here is a link that might be useful: State animal poisoning laws

Obviously it's extremely unlikely that a law would reference a particular type of non-prohibited or non-licensed poison. Like you found, most laws would apply to dangers to endangered wildlife, pets, and children (as I alluded to above). Federal and state law will address accidental poisoning of endangered wildlife. State law covers potential poisoning of pets in almost all, if not all, states. And, one can only imagine the legal possibilities if a child was poisoned.

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Has anyone tried gassing squirrels with an auto exhaust? I read about this on a website and wondered if that wouldn't be a good answer for those that trap them. Once the animal is trapped, a blanket over the cage set next to a running-auto muffler is reported to work well. From what I understand, there is no pain and the animal just peacefully goes to sleep. Cleanup would also be about as easy as it gets. It sounds like this might be an excellent method.

One can only imagine the legal ramifications of a child eating your freshly sprayed apples too.

If they can sue you for having the temptation of a swimming pool the apple is an archetypical temptation.
The kids that "tasted" my apples didn't check to see if I had sprayed and they live close enough to have seen me spraying through the summer.

We don't even know if the bonbons would poison a human, we do know a freshly sprayed apple could depending on what it was sprayed with.

You can't run scared of every possibility or you'll live in a padded cell.

Brandon, there is no law I could find making poisoning of squirrels by *any* means illegal, whether it is bonbons, antifreeze, or rat poison. Trapping may be illegal in some states but I could find nothing on poisoning whatsoever. Since that site seems to list every law concerning animals I don't think there are any such laws.

CO should work, but I imagine it would be some work to rig up a chamber and you had better be careful to not put yourself in a permanent sleep while at it! I did notice one law against CO in fact; I was not thinking of it as a poison but California disallows its use (I think they were just trying to stop vets from using it to euthanize dogs and cats but they wrote the statute too broadly). See link below. I usually shoot them to the head, they are completely dead in ten seconds.

Scott

Here is a link that might be useful: CO statute in California

Scott,

Either you misunderstood me, or I'm misunderstanding your response about the legal stuff. Oh, well, I guess it doesn't matter. All I really care about is that people are thinking.

The shot to the head is probably a good alternative, except for possible neighbor problems (especially in a highly populated area/city) and cleanup. If done correctly, it sounds like a reasonably humane way to kill. I was thinking the tailpipe method might have the advantage because guns (loud noises/neighborhood fears) wouldn't be a problem and it sounds less messy. The gun solution may be best for many, but for city folks that are worried about using the gun in the middle of a neighborhood, I think the tailpipe method would be worth looking into. It seems infinitely more humane than some of the awful stuff I've read about in some posts.

Well Brandon, there you are with your tailpipe method. Off to jail with you. Just kidding, of course.

If I tried to direct the exhaust from a vehicle at a caged squirrel, my neighbors would probably think I was crazy and have me taken away.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Interestingly, my squirrel problems started after the Emerald Ash Borer killed several dozen ash trees in the immediate neighborhood. Squirrels will not look at your vegetables if there are trees producing seeds within a 100 yards. It makes no sense to them, nutrient-wise. But once the ash was removed from their crop rotation, the raspberries and mulberry came under heavy attack. Both the raspberry patch and mulberry tree were quite mature, they just went from zero interest to a siege within a few years.

They do not touch the grapes, kiwis, or pears, given the many hickory and oak trees in the area, fruiting in late summer and fall. They also eat a lot of maple (summer) and elm (late spring) seeds. They will get the chestnuts if given a chance, obviously.

The long term fix, of course, is to have your city plant a variety of nut and seed trees in the streets around you, or plant them yourself if you have land. Equilibrium population will then be determined by winter mortality, and gardens will be relatively unaffected.

Glib:

I live in a neighborhood with many red and white oak trees, and equilibrium population seems to be determined primarily by the food supply, specifically acorns. The acorn crop varies quite a bit from year to year, and the squirrel population seems to track it closely. The more acorns, the higher the overwintering population of squirrels.

Since I have no control over the acorn supply, I have to try to control the breeding population in my immediate area, and that is what I do with squirrel bonbons. Nuts are a fall/winter crop, and a high squirrel population means heavy pressure on all of my fruits during the following summer when the nuts are gone, including those the squirrels store away. If it were not for all the oak trees, the squirrel population would be much lower, but I can't cut down all the oaks so I have no choice but to try to control the breeding population. The best time for that is over the winter, and that is why I am setting out bonbons now.

It is not cold enough here for squirrels to die from low temperature alone, so food supply is the primary determinant for the population. The more nut trees you have around, the more squirrels. I have compared my neighborhood, where the mature oaks were mostly left in place when houses were built, with others not far away where the land was completely cleared, and the difference in squirrel population is striking.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

I fully agree with Jellyman, they reproduce according to carrying capacity.
Your solution is the exact opposite of what would work.
More food = more squirrels. More squirrels = more wanting to sample your goods. More wanting to sample your goods = more who will find it to be something they really want.

And even if planting nuts and seeds were the answer you would still find some that had a preference for fruit. I've shot squirrels that were stuffed with wild grapes and nuts are going full bore in hunting season.

Want to get rid of squirrels, cut down all trees. You never see a squirrel in a lone tree in the middle of acres because crossing open ground is too dangerous.
I think the reason squirrels generally stay out of my apples is they have to cover ground. But with a bumper crop of nuts this year a few eating in my butternut decided to take the risk to sample my apples. If the butternut wasn't there they probably wouldn't have taken the chance.
I expect that will change when my yard gets filled and they can go from the power lines to the shed and then make the rounds in the trees. Then I'll have to take some control measures.

Winter kill isn't really an issue because they go into sort of a semi-hibernation and simply stay in their dens. And like most woodland vegetarians can survive off inner bark, besides that they store food.

My point was to even the food supply, rather than increasing it. Alternatively, to make sure there is something producing a lot of nuts when a particular crop ripens.

They reproduce according to the food supply. It's already even according to them. You cannot make nature better.
If you have draws for squirrels within 100yds (actually within about 10 acres) and you have a safe path to your fruit (according to a squirrel) they will check it out.
The more squirrels you have the more likely there will be one who has a taste for that particular fruit.

Well, I'm glad to see that the tone of THIS squirrel thread is more civil than the one from earlier this summer/autumn. All of that flaming really served no purpose except to incite people's emotions.

The only thing I have to contribute to this discussion is:

I did a lot of live trapping and removal of squirrels this past season, starting in about May. And, yes, this is technically illegal in my state -- it's legal to live trap the squirrels as a nuisance species, it was the part about relocating them to the community college campus a few miles away that was the illegal part, since trapped nuisance animals are suppossed to be "humanely" killed. I guess the rationale of the law is that you aren't suppossed to dump your nuisance animal problem on someone else. This all defeats the purpose/marketing pitch of a a live trap as a "humane" catch-and-release trapping system. But, I'm a wimp, and don't kill things easily, especially if they're big enough to look at me, so I'll take my chances with the law.

Anyway, in the end, I think I took about 10 squirrels away, plus two bunnies (who knew!). I had SO MUCH LESS squirrel damage this year than ever before.

The one thing I wasn't able to do was trap red squirrels, even in a smaller live trap I bought just for the purpose. I don't know if they're too smart or what. The gray or fox squirrels (whatever they are) are easily trapped. The little red squirrels, which are the most destructive overall, have NEVER gone in my traps.

Dennis
SE Michigan

Dennis,
Laws in many states precluding relocation/translocation of wildlife are based not on the 'making the situation worse for someone else', but on scientific evidence amassed over years of study by wildlife biologists which indicate that there are numerous adverse effects associated with unregulated translocation of wildlife.

Some of these include:
Stress and demise of the translocated animal associated directly with being trapped and translocated is a common problem - capture myopathy is a valid concern with many widldlife species.
Translocated animals have to locate food, shelter, and mates in a new setting, while avoiding predators that may or may not have been present in their previous habitat - all the while in competition with the population(s) of their own and competing species that were already in residence at the translocation site.
In most instances of unregulated/unpermitted wildlife translocation, the damaging animals are translocated to sites which may already be at carrying capacity for that species - in some cases, with an end result of exacerbating stress and starvation across the established population.
Translocated animals may introduce diseases/parasites to a new population or may be subsequently be exposed to diseases/parasites that were not present in their original habititat.
Trapping and translocation may leave behind offspring which are not yet able to fend for themselves. Granted, humane dispatch would do the same, but 'soft-hearted' folks who trap and translocate - illegally - tend not to consider this factor in their quest not to harm the little animals.

I prefer not to trap them, and again, I am blessed with great alternative wild crops so that the squirrels pressure is minimal despite a density that probably no one else has in this forum. In the Fall, I can see up to two dozen squirrels at any given time in my frontyard (there are a dozen hickories and one very large oak), with all my crops except mushrooms in the backyard. When I clean my garage's attic in the spring, there are literally tens of pounds of nut shells and pine cones.

Because my damage is all in late June-early July (mulberries and raspberries), I have been thinking about just leaving a couple of small buckets of cracked corn around during that month (one buck worth of chicken feed), and see if it helps. Hence my previous controversial post.

But given the territoriality of these things, if I were to decide to trap them (I had to trap rabbits which got in my greens), I would dispatch them and give them to the chickens. At least they would be put to good use, and the chickens sure like to have toys in the winter.

I dyed a trapped squirrel maroonish red once with food coloring to see if I was getting returns from the big oak and hickory filled old cemetery a mile or so away. Never saw this one again. I often have wondered what tales he may have caused. I don't like killing anything but I was probably not doing my many catches any favors, not so much by competition or starvation but by the red-shouldered hawks found mainly away from immediate backyards.

Glib, if you have electrical wiring in your garage's attic, please consider that you could be in danger of fire due to squirrels eating the insulation off of the wires! You may want to try to block the animal's entrance with heavy hardware cloth or something.

Gonebananas, LOL maybe your maroonish-red squirrel decided to get his hair done by another stylist. I hear punk is not in style right now, so all the other little squirrels probably made fun of him.

Ever since the Black Walnut tree was removed down the block from me the gray squirrels have been all over my Kiwis. They have also been visited this year by the possums, Skunks and Raccoons but the squirrels are daily visitors along with the birds. Can the bonbons be used during the winter to control the Squirrels?

Alitin:

Winter is the most effective time to use squirrel bonbons because of reduced availability of other food sources. They will disappear quickly if you have substantial numbers of squirrels around. The objective is to reduce the breeding population for next spring.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

has anyone fed the bon bons to a live trapped squirrel, to see the effects?

I just use a baited feeder! I sit and watch them eat corn ,then i take aim and fire a pellet from my pellet gun!

If I remember correctly, many commercial rodenticides contain vitamin D. Apparently rodents can't handle calcium very well. The vitamin D gives them system overload. They calcify. This may be the nature of your great bon-bon idea. I don't know as to calcium toxicity in other animals but suspect it's not an issue, otherwise it seems there would be a great risk of secondary extermination of predator species. I have always made sure I had a current hunting license in hand and just blasted the little buggers. On the occasions I have havahearted them for other people in dense neighborhoods, a trash can of water solved the disposal issue. If I am correct about the vitamin D, you could just get some at your local health food store and mix this with the chunky pb instead of plaster of paris. This then would probably also work for your voles. Happy hunting. Oh, ever consider a cross-bow.

I wonder why we so often take a simple, effective idea and try to complicate it. I don't know whether it's lack of vitamin D or an excess of same, but peanut butter/PoP bonbons work just fine to eliminate squirrels. I pick a few off the birdfeeder with a pellet gun too, but when it's time to deal with a major squirrel invasion, it's bonbons for me. I have yet to see a downside to this method.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Besides the normal guy thing of taking something apart to see what makes it tick I think how they work is brought up to know if it's a humane death.
I've had dogs die of bloat and I wouldn't wish that on any critter.

It's winter and I finally have enough time on my hands to participate with this site, and the subject of squirrels is dear to my heart, so here's my 2 cents.

I have sometimes gotten control of squirrels that were already feeding on fruit trees by spreading tangle trap over stretch wrap about 4' up the trunk and pulling up sagging branches with string. At other sites this has failed although I have found squirrel tails stuck in the goo.

Because I manage so many small orchards I have found that what works on one site may fail at another. This is a sad fact that often escapes the reasoning displayed on sites like this. You can never assume that if something works for you it will always work elsewhere. Nor can you assume that the behavior of any species of wildlife will be the same at one site as another.

I was glad to read the discussion about the actual heartlessness of Havaheart traps. If you use them to relocate them at least admit it is for your own sake and not the animal- there's nothing wrong with this in itself. Of course once you know why it is illegal it would be irresponsible not to humanely kill the animal.

Squirrels die very quickly when submerged in water. I would not kill a raccoon this way however, I just can't stand how long the process takes for this wonderful and terrible pest. My raccoons recieve a single pellit from a 1,000 fps target gun just above the spot between their eyes. A properly placed shot will send them into convulsions and very rapid and merciful death.

wish this site had spell check

Will these bon bon's also work for deer?... rabbits?

Jimmy:

No. Bonbons are for squirrels.

Harvestman:
With all due respect to your "reasoning", have you ever tried squirrel bonbons at one of your many sites and found them to fail? I doubt there is a squirrel out there, even the most special squirrel, that does not like peanut butter. If you want to fiddle around with plastic wrap, string, and goo on your trees, that's up to you, but most of us are looking for the easiest way.

Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Jellyman, I'm sorry if I ever offended with past posts, but quotations around reasoning is an insult- what is the point to hostility amongst strangers? We all have too much in common to waste time on this kind of thing. You and I are both experienced orchardists and I consider you my ally and your recommendations quite useful.

You said yourself that bon bons don't work after squirrels already have started eating fruit. I live on the edge of woods with unlimited squirrels and poisoned oats don't work, trapping doesn't work even the shotgun is limited becuase you just can't kill them fast enough during a population explosion where they keep coming from deeper in the woods. I have already read of other people who have tried bon bons and didn't find them to be the silver bullet and your explanation was they didn't start early enough in the season. When there is an unlimited population coming from the outside it would result in the same situation practically speaking. Don't ever assume that what works in your little corner is absolutely the universal solution, by the way. Nature is unpredictable.

My recommendation wasn't to supercede yours, just as another trick to have in the arsenal. It has stopped squirrels already in the habit of taking fruit from a specific tree. It has also sometimes failed.

You people are a bunch of sick fuks! Poisoning squirrels then saying "i don't know how it works, but it does" is BS to pretend you aren't breaking the law. Guess what? Fish and game, and the ASPCA are investigating you now.
Enjoy your jailtime takin' up the pooper you jagovs.