A Squirrel's World #1

I hear people saying all the time, Oh that's a girl thing or a man thing. Well, this time it's really a 'squirrel' thing.

Several years ago we planted a special varieties of paper shelled pecans in our yard, so they would be easier to crack and more convenient for us to use. I use them in many ways by roasting them, spicing them up for a Christmas treat, in cookies, as pies, on top of cakes and even in stuffing. As you might surmise, we love eating these special nuts.

Now, we're not alone in our quest for these wonderful morsels called pecans.

The squirrels around our place love them too. We knew that very well, and we certainly didn't mind sharing with them, as our little friends need to eat too and I have always loved squirrels anyway.

BUT ... and that is a big word, animals and especially rodents (That is what a squirrel is, you know) have no concept of fairness. They not only took all the nuts from the native pecans trees, they took all the nuts all our trees, plus all the pears and peaches in our yard. They just had a variable picnic in our yard and didn't intend to share with the silly human beings that owned the place.

Now we had a predicament. What it amounted to was the squirrels either buried or ate everything in sight and after waiting for several years for our pecan trees to produce these treasures we could not even get a bucket full. This left us with a dilemma and is we wanted to have some nuts; we had to find a solution.

My husband wanted to go in the yard and shoot the little fellows but I would not hear of it.
"They had a right to eat too," I would defend them as being living creatures too.
Although, we wanted some nuts I couldn't go so far as to destroy one of God's little friends. Therefore, I went to the Organic gardening magazines to read some solutions to the problem and try a natural way to deter the little beggars.

First, I tried tying pie pan in our trees and the little fellows just laughed at me. Next, we bought a fake snake. The following day we saw the squirrels out playing with it. So when that didn't work, I tried sitting a fake plastic owl in the tree and moving it daily. But, our fuzzy-tailed friends ignored it too because they had brains.

Finally, I went down the street to the neighborhood home fix-it store, to see what we could find. We ended up buying some metal flashing 36 inches wide, the type you use under roofing.
We had one single large pecan tree in the front yard that stood all alone and not near anything else. I figured the animals couldn't jump on it from somewhere else, therefore we proceeded to wrap the base of the tree with the flashing and stapled it together. Now all we had to do was wait to see if our idea would work.

We sat watching out the front window, praying our new deterrent would work. All of a sudden, a red bushy tail jumped for the tree. To our amazement and I'm sure to his, he slipped, fell off it, flipping backwards to the ground. We started to laugh.

You should see the expression of surprise on that little guys face. He tried again only to have the same results and by this time, I held my sides with hysterics laughter.

Now I'm sure that little fellow and the ones that tried after that didn't appreciate our humor but it brought great joy to me.

The squirrels could stay and we would get our fair share of nuts too. As they say, there's more then one way to scam a squirrel. Unfortunately, it became a contest between the woman and beast, that seems to never end.

More to come on the Squirrel Wars.