When you plant the bulb, lay a piece of the chicken wire flat, underground, over the bulb. The lily will grow through it and, hopefully, the critter will stop digging when it hits it.

tj

I have found that over time, chicken wire weakens and becomes useless. Since you can't see the how it's holding up, you have no idea how long your plants will be safe. I finally decided to put all my newly planted bulbs and small rooted shrubs into baskets made of hardware cloth.
It has a smaller mesh design and far stronger and longer lasting. You can find it in the fencing dept of Home Depot.
It comes in rolls. It is not good for plants that will develop stronger thicker root systems. If you have burrowing critters like I do, put a cap of chicken wire on the top of your buried basket, and you should be able to keep those pests from attacking your plants from underneath or above ground! sles

There are live traps that can help but you need to know what to do once you have trapped those squirrels. Most states have laws that require licensing to legally transport any wildlife from one place to another.
Chicken wire, placed on the soil, is a deterent to those wee buggers from digging and there is easy to see when it might need to be replaced, 7 to 8 years in my experience.

We have a regular group of squirrels that frequent our yard. Not a huge amount, maybe 5-6 of them. We seem to be tolerating them at the moment. We feed birds and they are under the feeders getting the scraps and I don't mind that. We have two squirrel proof feeders and baffles so they aren't bothering the feeders much. We also have a large tube feeder that we put safflower seed in which is their least favorite food and 90% of the time, they avoid it.

They have dug up bulbs and eaten them, and it was suggested to me to lay hardware cloth or wire mesh over the ground when I plant them and we did that. We cut pieces to size of the area where the bulbs were and it seems to me that they only bother the bulbs, the first year we plant them. It was suggested that they are attracted by disturbed soil. I only use crocus and daffodils, which I don't think they like that much, although they did eat crocus bulbs one fall. I only have a couple of lilies but they don't seem to bother those. I heard tulips are a favorite of theirs and for that and other reasons, I don't grow them.

The other thing they did was to eat and run off with iris tubers that I just bought and planted in pots and put them in the shade for a few days. They also love to chew on succulent leaves, but only on those I have had in the house in pots for some reason. They never bother the hens and chicks, planted in the ground. So I don't bring my houseplants out for the summer now. I'm considering buying cactus in pots to surround an area of succulents I'd like to put outside in the summer. (g)

I wouldn't consider trapping them. Nowhere to bring them to and they would just be replaced by new ones.

You just have to find a way to live with them. :-)

I have heard the mixture of cayenne pepper, pepper powder,hot sauce,baby shampoo and ammonia. don't how much of each ingredient. any suggestion? I tried to add water and mixed them, it stopped squirrels for couple days, then, they appeared again. I guess I did not use the right amount of each ingredient.

I've had good luck with pure ground cayenne pepper. Chipmunks and squirrels will ruin my seed and seedling flats when I put them outside if I don't sprinkle them with the pepper. I buy a big container of it at Costco.

Hello,

Do a search in the forums for "Chipmunk Swimming Pool".
I can attest to the effectiveness, but it does seem a little cruel.

Steve

Thin em all out...use live traps or a small body gripping trap(the later requires a license to trap)
put them out humanely. That's the problem with too much wildlife, if the populations aren't culled things get out of control.