This spring I was plagued by ground hogs. They were eating my tomatoes, chewing off the cucumber vines, and lopping off the tops of the orchids. A friend told me that they don't like lime. It gets on their paws, and when they lick their paws they don't like the taste. My neighbor also says she can't put lime out because it gets on her dogs paws, and it burns them. I bought a bag of hydrated lime (it looks like white flour) and sprinkled it all around the plants, and sure enough, the ground hogs left them alone. The lime may need to be replaced after a heavy rain, but that's no problem. I also heard that a rag soaked in ammonia also works. Since dogs and ground hogs don't like the lime, I was wondering if squirrels wouldn't, either. So this fall I'm going to sprinkle the lime under the bird feeders and on the tree limbs, to see if it will deter the greedy tree rats.

bananas are herbs= deliscious. My local squirrels see mine usually as a delicasy. The seem to mostly dig for the roots. I havent come accross rats however.If you dont want to hurt them go to your local pest control company and buy a live trap...catch em and relocate them.

Story today from the wire services: PORT HURON, Mich. (May 31) -- Squirrel. Thief. A brazen squirrel has been grabbing small American flags placed in a Port Huron, Mich., cemetery and carrying them up to its nest, which now looks as if it's bedecked in bunting. Every Memorial Day, volunteers place the flags next to the graves of nearly 1,000 veterans buried at Mount Hope Cemetery about 55 miles northeast of Detroit. The flags were undisturbed during a Mass held Monday. The Times Herald reports that workers at the cemetery on Tuesday noticed several flags had been torn off their wooden staffs, which were still in the ground. The mystery was solved in front of superintendent Ron Ceglarek's eyes. He watched a squirrel detach a flag stapled to a staff and carry it up a tree to the nest. They do what they do, when their tiny brain functions at all! Rb

One year later, and time for a report. In the past couple of months, I've caught eight fox squirrels, and moved them out of reach. That's about half what I caught last year. I have had zero squirrel garden damage this year, BTW. The fact that I've caught only eight (about half that of last year) means to me that I had a serious overpopulation of them last year, and that culling made a big difference. But as expected, the population grew in the spring, though never got as bad as it was last year. We had a very wet spring, and the winter acorn crop was enormous. As a result, I only caught a few in May and June. They just weren't that hungry for my bait. But just in the last two days I caught FIVE! Wham. Wham. Wham. Wham. Wham. The nuts are running out, I guess. As of now, I go outside, and I hardly see any of them at all in my yard. As I've learned, the repopulation/dispersal rate of urban squirrels is very slow. In a given year, these squirrels don't just migrate from one yard to the next. They just don't do it. I consider them cleaned out of my yard until next spring, when I'll dust off the trap and snatch a few more.