Hi All Again. Newbie, your stories really brought back memories of my childhood as well, only I lived in northern lower Michigan. That was before I-75 was built and the only way to get there was a 2-lane road, so basically you didn't go unless you lived there or were visiting someone who lived there. It was a wonderful childhood. Like you, the woods were my playground. My mother would send us out the door, sometimes with lunches packed, and we wouldn't come home until suppertime. We explored the woods, climbed trees, swam in the river, went to a place we called "The Enchanted Forest" (it was actually a bit of a swamp, but it had that "enchanted" feel to a bunch of kids). We hardly ever watched TV, didn't even have one until I was 5, and even then, we could only get 3 stations. We did family things. Our parents read to us, we played games -- monopoly and cards were our favorites. And for the card games, we played Euchre, Bridge, "Hand and Foot" -- I was quite the card shark, even as a teenager! In fact, I can recall many, many evenings, as a teenager, sitting around playing cards (and thus talking) with my parents and siblings. I wonder how many families have done that lately? I wonder if you could even drag today's kids away from their computers or phones long enough to play cards. We couldn't talk long on the phone. We had a party line (remember those?) -- 3 families shared the same line. As a teenager, I had a 5 minute limit to my phone calls, and the phone was in the living room, so it wasn't private. But it didn't matter, because my parents knew everything I did anyway. What a loss of a way of life. I'm sure that today, parents do not allow their children to run around in those woods unsupervised (I wouldn't!) I do resist the urge to make "buddies" out of the squirrels. My father has done so, (he's 83) and I have photos of him giving squirrels whole peanuts - they take it right out his hand! And they never bother his garden, so maybe he's on to something! But Dad doesn't have all of the critters I have -- just the squirrels. If I tried to feed my outdoor neighbors, where would I start or stop? I do remember, at the last house we were in (suburb), I had a vegetable garden. I had tried tulips there too, but they just kept disappearing. Then one day, as I was working in the vegetable garden, I looked up in surprise to see a red tulip blooming right in front of me! Little critters had transplanted for me! So I just enjoyed it there. I try very hard to have a "live and let live" attitude here. I don't like harming animals. I do carry a gun with me on my walks around the property, but that is only because I have once been attacked by a rabid raccoon (which I did have to kill - it was him or me and my dog), and I've been confronted by a badger. Fortunately in that case, I was able to scare him off rather than hurt him. (I grew up with guns, and can handle them expertly -- actually enjoy shooting -- but not hunting. I haven't done any hunting since I was a teenager.) We have trapped 5 raccoons using Have-a-Heart traps. They were living too close to the house and causing all kinds of damage. They are now living in a Forest Preserve about 20 miles from here (although getting them there and letting them loose is a story all it's own!) As for my gardens, I will continue to plant what most critters don't like, and when I put in my vegetable garden (I'm putting in the structure for it this year) I'm putting up adequate fencing to keep the critters out -- which means going below ground AND covering the top. But better that than poisons or traps or any other harmful thing. We have enough Hawks, Owls and other predators here to handle keeping the critters under control. They don't need any help from me. I guess you could say I'm a pacifist at heart, and will fight only if cornered. Sorry for the long post. Best Regards to all of you and your gardens. MacThayer

I live in an area where buying a pellet gun or setting traps I'd be up my ears in dead squirrels within a week with more left to kill. Oddly, i live IN the city and not a rural area. The thing is I live in a place bordering one of the largest green areas for a few miles. The squirrel population is extraordinary. At almost any point during the day you see huge families cutting back/forth. Very few seem to actually live near my garden, but this squirrel community is so expansive they seem to be able to scour huge amounts of territory without fighting for the territory. I don't know if squirrels tribe up or anything, but around here I'd have to control my garden instead of the squirrels. The squirrels are firmly in charge here. hehe... I haven't had an issue with them being huge pests in 3 years here...until this year. This year they have developed a really huge appetite for tomatoes. Rather than losing a handful every flush I'm getting plants stripped bare as far as they can reach. Oh well...

harvestman: In 2002, having lost all my fruit, I undertook to protect my harvests from squirrels. I read everything I could find on the web about squirrels and eventually stumbled upon this forum and John Fasoldt's squirrel board. I read these two avidly - and still do. I started with a BB gun because I'm in an urban area and didn't even know about trapping. Moderate success. Then I purchased two traps and found they worked just as GW posters and John said they would. It took a year to get the population down. But ever since I keep all my crops. I'll take a rough guess of 600 squirrels in 7 years. During those 7 years I experienced, read and learned quite a bit about squirrels and their habits, their curiosities, their vulnerabilities and their cleverness. I'll take a rough guess at 150 posts about squirrels on GW Fruit & Orchard since 2005 and maybe another 150 posts on John's board. And I'll add another 100 websites such as other gardening forums, universities, wikis and the like. It is from this body of knowledge that I spoke. Your comments caused me to think that my first hand experience is limited to the Eastern Fox squirrel and is further limited to my area, let's say, L.A. County. However, I found that what John and his posters said about the Gray squirrels in the east (he's a professional exterminator in New Jersey) applied to the Fox squirrels here. So I began to think in terms of common behaviors of several species of squirrel. In seven years, I have not found that the squirrels have "gotten wise" to much of anything in my area. The sole exception is that if they are caught in a live trap and released, they are then "trap shy" and are difficult to trap again. So I suppose our experiences differ in this regard. Maybe some of that Ivy League has rubbed off on your Gray squirrels in the east. But here in the west, or I should say, my backyard, I found that 600 squirrels behaved in generally the same way. That way was just as John and his posters described in the east. I make no statements nor claims about any pests other than squirrels. Indeed, I still have great trouble with possums in my backyard. From your posts it seems to me you have much broader experience than I have with regard to many different kinds of pests in many different locations. My post was aimed at the relative newcomer experiencing loss of harvest due to squirrels. It was not so much directed at experienced people like yourself or jellyman or scottsmith. I have empathy for the newcomer who spends much time, money and hardwork only to find squirrels taking it all. These newbies face an internet loaded with all manner of gimmicks for squirrel control: flashing lights, high frequency audio, olfactory repellants, fake owls and so on. I've read so many posts of disappointments in the failure of these devices. I've also read many posts about successes. These two aggregates of many people's experiences combined with my own experience led me to attempt to save newbies from loss of time, money, work and harvests by cautioning them to stay away from all these things. I did not intend to caution them away from techniques advocated by professionals such as yourself. I thought, tell them to stick with the simple - the tried and true. None of this is intended to deny your successes with other techniques. You professionals are in a different class than newcomers. For example, there is a growing number of urban newcomers whose interest in growing food has been sparked into life starting, say, five years ago. They, like me, are backyard growers who have been "trained" to cut newly planted bareroot trees off at 36" in order to develop low scaffolds. So in our case, the tanglefoot technique doesn't apply. But this does not deny the validity, as you mentioned, of using tanglefoot on trees with 48" before the first scaffold. I did paint with very broad brush strokes. But I did so with the newbie in mind. I probably should have qualified my comments in this way. Despite some differing experiences, I think you and I are united in trying to help people grow their own food and keep it from the critters. I've been a bit rambling here, but it is my attempt to answer your question regarding why I am confident to speak about squirrel control. Tony

I hope we get some suggestions here. For 17 years we have never had a problem with the squirrels. Early this morning, one of our squirrels was spotted in our hibiscus. My wife thought it was cute that he was climbing it. This evening when we got in from work, we discovered that 75% of the hibiscus leaves have been stripped along with 20% of the small branches. I sprinkled tabasco sauce on the remainder this evening hoping that it might save them.