Natural Squirrel Deterrent

[Jin]

I think growing your own food as ringworm is doing is way more sustainable and creating less pain to other life forms than buying fruits and veggies on the market, therefore I think it would make more sense that you would applaud his efforts instead of talking as if it represents 'humans losing the way' . I'd say it's more accurate to say that this is a clear example of 'finding the way' instead.


By the way, you do know that nature is extremely cruel too, right? It's not like animals are petting each other in the wild and there are no deaths. There are animals torturing each other even without the need to kill for survival, there is a lot of pain, survival of the fittest, one eating the other, etc.

definetly , its hard to imagine what ringworm has to go through while growing food ,

it takes a strong person to do such things and make the hard decison when the time comes ,

what ringworm is doing is not "humanity having lost the way " , what all of humanity is doing as a whole is "humanity having lost the way "

people that don't grow food really have no idea , and its easy to judge without any idea of what it takes

also nature is definetly far more cruel for it feels no pain in its actions , nature kills countlessly , sometimes without any reason or rhyme (more often then not)

these posts are just a reflection on the powerlessness over the things of the world , and how all of it just so unsustainable

edit : hey this is not an attack , ringworm

 

[Ringworm]

The hawk that hangs around scooping up rabbits^

I never took it as an attack. Perhaps I was misreading or misunderstanding your words, but they appeared highly negative about your situation, not mine.
I do not comprehend hating a situation and doing nothing to change it.

It's kinda the Tao line of thought that the best way to change the world is to change yourself. Set a good example and let the rest fall in line.
It's a hard year to stay positive with politics here in the US dredging up the lowest humans available, and things going on in the world that are horrible, etc. Important to take what little we've learned from psychedelia and apply it the best we can to our world (without taking it too seriously).

Either way.... off to the woods today, go walk around for a few days.

 

[hug46]

What about a wild boar deterrent... They ate nearly all of my last year's veggie garden, even tried eating the san pedros but apparently didn't like it very much thank god.

We have had the same problem. a sturdy-ish wooden fence is the answer. We used to have an electric fence hooked up to a car battery which is less time consuming to sort but if a baby gets in underneath the charged electric cord the mother will risk the shock to follow her child.

As far as Ringworm's thoughts on invasive critters and the human disposition towards anthropomorphising animals i have to agree. Since i last wrote about my house inavsion in this thread i have had to pull out all the insulation in my roof. They have eaten through my plumbing resulting in a flooded bathroom. They have eaten through a gas pipe which luckily was only connected to a nearly empty gas bottle. They have even stolen 2 bags of weed off of me.

I still trap them with humane traps and relocate them but have been far less prone to being lachrimose when i have found them drowned in the toilet (round about 20 during the dry summer last year).
It's me or them. It's not cruel. It's just nature, and nature isn't cruel. I got a friend of mine to skin and gut a couple of the drowned ones for me to eat. I glazed them in honey, stuffed them with dried breadcrumbs, garlic, sage, onion and lardons and baked them.

 

[WarpZone]

Although I respect the comments by the city dwellers that do not produce their own food. I'll comment here anyway. If you buy food from a market, please don't bother to respond to this post.

Squirrels are a pest. In the spring the newly born ones do not know fear.
We used to joke that the first harvest from the vegetable garden was a rabbit and two squirrels. Killing for the sake of killing is wasteful, so be sure to eat them.

Folks that think squirrels are "cute" have never had a food source destroyed by them. They've never had squirrels tear a hole in your houses siding, destroyed all the insulation and eaten wiring (which created the possibility of a dangerous house fire).
I keep it simple, I'm not willing to allow roaches, or mice in or on my house, why would I allow squirrels?

The concept of planting a crop in the woods for the squirrels is absurd. These creatures are practically born pregnant. Their population is directly controlled by the availability of a food source.... ie planting squirrel food will result in more squirrels.

So, aside from killing a few of them, the only lasting deterrent is having a dog or cat that scares them off, or at the very least keeps them in the trees.

Squirrels are amazing to forest health, they will hang mushrooms to dry thus releasing the spores on very large areas. They can eat many deadly mushrooms without a problem. They will hide tree seeds and grow new trees. Squirrel is keystone species. Plant some oak trees for them. They will actually process the oak acorns so they can eat them and it will keep them busy at least for some time.

I have bribed my squirrels with tens of kilograms of hemp seeds and they will not bother with anything else, they are too busy hiding them and opening them up individually when they eat them. Hemp seed is like crack to them and will also make their fur very shiny and nice. Any squirrel surplus will migrate away, that is built into them. Also hemp seeds will attract wide variety of birds, which will lay eggs, which the squirrels will try to steal, keeping them busy while birds chase them. The birds will also then eat many insects that could be problem for the garden. Also you can provide the squirrels with small stones that they will mock bury as a fake stash to confuse other squirrels, again keeping them busy.

Old and big spruce trees will also keep them busy. They will only cause mayhem in the garden if they do not have enough actual squirrel food.

It can be expensive to afford squirrels but I like them. I find deer and rabbits more difficult, as they require fence to stop them, also they will kill actual trees unlike squirrels. Rabbits can kill full grown apple trees with no problem. But rabbits are keystone species as well, dispersing hundreds of plant seeds as they go, so they get to stay too.

There are not many problems in the garden that a fence, big pile of hemp seed and a patch of mapacho can't solve.

 

[Basil77]

I started feeding the stray cats in my area and now the squirrels wont think twice about coming in my yard ;-) Before that, I couldn't even grow corn or sunflowers, or anything else for that matter. It's not their fault, they are just hungry. However, squirrels are highly detrimental to a garden, more so than any insect or other pests, besides raccoons, that I have ever encountered!

 

[Transform]

It's nice to live somewhere with endemic red squirrels, after living in the UK where invasive grey squirrels can be a destructive, albeit often entertaining, pest/guest. The main issue I have with the red ones is they usually beat me to the hazelnuts and walnuts. After a couple of good hazelnut years, they had a bit of a spike in population, so this year's hazelnuts were all taken Their cute antics more than make up for this Their mating song (well, high-pitched grunts) and dance can be particularly amusing.