Squirrels! Ugghh!



Our front yard

We live on a  scarcely wooded four acre lot in the country. The setting is really quite peaceful and beautiful. The trees are spaced fairly far apart and create a wonderful habitat for wildlife. We have a variety of birds and small woodland creatures in are yard. I have seen rabbits, raccoons, geese, an occasional snake and of course squirrels. We have a ton of squirrels in our yard. Apparently squirrels like Shagbark Hickory trees and boy do we have a lot of those! Well anyway, I'm sure that you probably think we coincide peacefully with God's creatures around us. This is not the case. When we first built our house in this wooded area, I loved watching all of the squirrels playfully chase each other around our yard. I thought they were adorable creatures that wouldn't harm anyone. Now I have a very different opinion of squirrels. I truly feel like they have literally waged war on us and our house. I'm pretty sure they are quite angry that we built our house smack-dab in the middle of their paradise.

I remember how distraught I was the first time I found my partially dead flowers laying on the concrete by the pots I had planted a couple of days earlier. "Who or what would have done something like this?" I thought to myself. Oh how many plants I have pain-stakingly placed in a pot or a flowerbed that have died at the hands (or paws, rather) of a squirrel. The senseless deaths of so many poor, defenseless plants. So sad.

And then there are the holes that I have found in the siding of our house. One day I was walking through the dining room when I heard some kind of scratching on the front porch. I looked out the window to see a squirrel chewing on our house. (Seriously!) I went out onto the porch to see several holes on the edges of our siding that I had never noticed before. The holes were all along our front porch siding from the concrete to about 3 feet high. I couldn't hardly believe it!



Bird feeder with squirrel-guard



I also recall a couple of years ago when we got a birdhouse for Christmas. We put it out on a post in our back yard that next spring. The bird feeder turned out to be a squirrel feeder. The feed lasted approximately three to four hours with those hogs around. The birds didn't have any food because the squirrels ate it all. We could see squirrel after squirrel shimmy its way up the narrow pole to the feeder. We tried putting sheet metal coated with Vaseline around the pole, thinking the squirrels would slide right off. The only thing that happened was that our squirrels got a sixties fur-do and I had to clean fur-encrusted dried Vaseline off the pole a few days later. It was literally a game that the squirrels were certainly winning. We were so excited when we finally beat them with the lovely round metal "squirrel-guard" that you see pictured.



Herb garden, squirrel-style



Just days ago another squirrel incident occurred. I planted an herb garden and I was pretty excited about it. I could practically see myself cooking up all of the wonderful meals with my fresh, home-grown herbs. I had worked in my flowerbeds all day and didn't get my herb garden finished that first day. I had the ground worked and the herbs planted but I still needed to put down some kind of weed barrier and mulch. I also needed to edge the garden with rocks. I decided to call it a day and finish it the next day. I was shocked when I looked out the window the next morning and saw that the squirrels had done their own landscaping in my new herb garden. There was one large hole and a few other small holes with various piles of dirt scattered about. I guess the squirrels didn't like the change in their habitat. (Obviously!)





The herb garden after the squirrels landscaped





The finished herb garden



It was then that I decided these little creatures and my unusual relationship with them would make an interesting post for my blog. I decided to go outside to take several pictures of them in action. I walked around our yard several times at various points in the day and wouldn't you know that not one of those squirrels would show their furry little faces! It figures! I'm sure they knew I was up to no good and wanted to capture their true personalities.





Well, as you can see I finally did get some good pictures of the squirrels in our yard. I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed taking them. I have to admit that when I watch them play and scurry about our yard, I can't help but think that they are pretty cute. Even after everything they have put us through, I still kind of like having them around.

On second thought, after reviewing the damage from the plant massacre last night, I think I'll have to come to terms with the fact that the squirrels and I are never going to be friends. I believe our relationship will always be comparable to that of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd . . . Tom and Jerry . . . Wiley Coyote and the roadrunner. What do you think? Does anyone have any ideas about how I can win this war?


















This is what I sprinkled on my potted plants to keep the squirrels away. It obviously didn't work.