You could try baiting the trap at the very back instead of on the trigger. If they are licking the peanut butter off of the trigger it may not be enough pressure to set it off. They may be setting it off as they leave by fussing with a peanut butter sticky mouth. If they have to go to the back of the cage to get the bait, they will have to actually step on the trigger. I'm also asuming this is a one sided trap. I only have experience with those. If it's 2 sided, try smearing cheerios in peanut butter (tiny bitof PB, for the sent) and stringing through yarn to tie to the trigger. They will have to fuss with it then. I hope this is helpful. Good luck.

Wetfeet - The Squirrel Toss video seems to have been removed. Bummer. Richardol - Oh, you meant the real Mark Trail. Cool. Interesting info - Squirrels that are black are grey squirrels w/ a different gene in play.* I first saw black squirrels in N. MN and thought they were pretty. They probably eat orchids, too. RP, red squirrels in the U.S. aren't endangered, but I just ran across info on Wikipedia about grey squirrels taking over in England, partially because they have no natural predators. That's too bad. "On some occasions, during the fall, large numbers of gray squirrels will search for new places to live. It is thought that this behavior, known as emigration, results when squirrel numbers are high and food is scarce. When mature forests covered most of eastern North America, this mass movement of squirrels was quite spectacular." http://www.dnr.state.md.us/wildlife/greysquirrel.html Can you imagine a "mass movement of squirrels"? It'd be like the Hitchcock movie "The Birds" or the attack of the killer tomatoes. "Hunters have to be quick and accurate to shoot the swift and elusive eastern grey squirrel. It is interesting to note that naturalist Ernest Thompson Seton credited these qualities of marksmanship, developed to a high degree by early American squirrel hunters, with helping to defeat the British during the American revolution." http://www.hww.ca/hww2.asp?id=89 Wow. My grandfather, who grew up in rural Arkansas, often shot squirrel, which we ate. Wild turkey, too. I didn't realize what a good shot he must have been. Any of you who can shoot a squirrel - amazing. The fact that squirrels travel through their territory in the same sequence each day suggests loads of possibilities. If you knew the little darling was going to hit your back yard around 5:30 every afternoon... http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Sciurus_carolinensis.html "Are There Squirrels in Heaven?" This and other topics are discussed on another anti-squirrel site: http://www.scarysquirrel.org/page1.html. WC8 *"Eastern grey squirrels Sciurus carolinensis commonly occur in two colour phases, grey and black, which leads people to thinkÂmistakenlyÂthat there are two different species. Black is often the dominant colour in Ontario and Quebec, toward the northern limits of the species range. Farther south the black phase is less common and is not found at all in the southern United States. This may indicate that the gene responsible for black coloration has some cold-weather adaptation associated with it." http://www.hww.ca/hww2.asp?id=89

Josie_2, "I have bought 2 Havahart traps (1 for regular squirrels and 1 for red squirrels) and I still can't trap the little devils. They help themselves to the bait and the traps spring shut without them inside." Unless there is something mechanically wrong with your traps, it is virtually impossible for a squirrel to eat the bait and not get trapped inside. In over a hundred catches I have had only two cases in which the animal got the bait and got away. The first time was when I had placed the trap on a slope and the squirrel bounced around enough inside the trap to cause it to roll down the hill. A design flaw of Havahart traps is that the door latch mechanism releases if the trap is rolled upside down. From that experience I learned to place my traps on reasonably level spots. More expensive live-catch traps don't have that flaw, but they do cost more and they aren't locally available. I got my traps locally. A couple of months ago I had a second escape, this time from a level placement. By doing a little "Crime Scene Investigation" I was able to piece together a probable explanation. The key piece of evidence was a hole in the ground near the empty trap. Apparently I caught a partly grown gray squirrel which was nearly too big for the trap (a smallish double-door chipmunk/ground squirrel/red squirrel trap) and the animal dug with it claws through the openings in the bottom of trap into the ground and got hold of a small tree root and used that as leverage to tip the trap over. The depth of the gouge in the ground and the marks on the little tree root indicated considerable strength. The next day what appeared to be the same squirrel was chattering noisily at me from a nearby tall tree. It's like he was bragging about his escape from my little trap. He kept up the tirade. So I shot him out of the tree with my 22-caliber airgun. He was a little bit too confident. Josie, is it possible that mice or voles are stealing the bait from your Havahart traps? They are small enough to squeeze between the wires of most Havahart traps, and they like all kinds of bait. And, if an animal just brushes up against the external trigger mechanism, it can be enough to set off the trap even though the animal is not in the trap at the time. Falling twigs, acorns, and sometimes even leaves are enough to set off my small trap, which seems to have a hair trigger. You might want to continue to experiment with your Havahart traps. Normally they are not easily defeated by squirrels. Read the instruction sheets to make sure you are setting the traps properly. Just out of curiosity, what are you using for bait? MM

Moonscapes! Ground squirrels will turn their environments into moonscapes. I probably had a raccoon in one garden a few weeks ago. An entire "sampling" was done. It even included dahlia branches! My first thought was "Marmot" but marmots are terribly unclever squirrels. They may eat sprouting sweet corn but require weeks to figure out that lettuce is edible. By that time, the gardener will have harvested the lettuce. It may take a marmot 1 or 2 generations to learn that onions can be eaten. I'm not saying ground squirrels are clever. It is just that they initiate bare earth campaigns. I bet they eat plants that are close to their burrows that are completely left alone if those plants are at a distance. Bulldoze the burrows, David! Steve