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

jpinard, I hate to tell you, but that's not how they get bf koi. They cross regular koi with native maylasian carp. Goldfish and koi are different enough that it isn't like crossing poodles and cockers for cockapoos. The offspring I get are a solid gray/brown color and are hard to see in the pond. We call them 'stealth fish'. I don't know how you're getting long finned fish with koi markings, if that's what you're basing it on. Here's a link explaining it. Here is a link that might be useful: story of butterfly koi

The bummer here is that nothing is going to restore the damage. Very sad. I would be livid!!! I have a cement block wall that is on two sides of my yard as I am on the end or corner with greenbelt behind me. It is really nice because we have trees all around but on the other side so no maintenance. Every now and again the county comes out and trims or whatnot. I have spoken with the supervisor on many occassions and he told me that if anything bothers us, looks overgrown, etc we can call him directly and they will immediatly take care of me. He said they do this for anyone in our type of location. We have called and each time they are fabulous. Your situation, even it they had the right away, just goes to show how workers, not all but many, just want to do the job but not necessarily do it right or well. No pride in quality or work. Unfortunately this is where this world is. Sorry, again.

Are you on antibiotics? I always take pro-biotics too -- want to avoid 'other' problems. Hope you'll bounce back fast. I came to Maui with a sore throat Jan. 4 and also waited until I had a little fever to go to a doctor. No strep, just rattles in my lungs. We played with Prednisone for a week; no improvement. I took my last of 14 Leviquin yesterday. Seems I've had pneumonia. Hoping the cough doesn't return now that I'm off the antibiotic (which was a Big Nasty).