I have made mouse traps out of five gallon buckets, and a tin can on a wire stretched over the open end. Wipe peanut butter on the can, and when the mouse steps out on it, it spins and dumps the mouse in the water.
I have been fighting squirrels all spring. Tomorrow a king size version goes up, and we'll see how the squirrels do. Going to get two more for other positions on my property.
Will keep you posted.
Steve
Why?
Why what?
Why are you fighting squirrels?
Because they come into my property, and will strip an apricot tree in half a day. They don't eat the meat, they leave that on the ground. They take off the pits. Same thing with almonds. They eat a lot of stuff, and also destroy a lot without eating it. They chew their way into the shed and plow through a bag of feed, eat some, and urinate and defecate in the rest of the bag while they're in there. We have hantavirus here, and so they bring that with them.
Other than that, I guess they're pretty okay.
Steve
Funny, I have to put out a walnut every morning to get Mr. Squirrel to come say hello.
Yesterday a squirrel put his foot on the electrical wire that protects the vegetable garden. He flipped back 5 feet and scolded the wire. He then cautiously jumped onto the fence between two electrical wires and touched the top electrical wire. That zapped him and retreated up a large tree. The Hav-A-Hart trap works too.
Put out food and water for them and they'll most likely stop marauding your area.
Kate - squirrels gotta eat too
>
You're never going to trap them all. The only sane solution is to protect things like the grain. How about storing it in clean metal trash cans with the lids strapped with bungee cords? If you think they'll chew the bungee cords, use chain. If they continue chewing on the shed until they figure out it's pointless, call a siding company and have them wrap the vulnerable areas in aluminum.
Simple cheap solution: procure one barn cat.
We have a stray neighborhood cat with one eye. He got into a fight with a squirrel. The hawks prefer snakes over squirrels, but thankfully squirrels are fairly easy to trap. A small price to have two full grown hickory trees.
The problem is that the food they prefer includes the guavas, kumquats, loquats, and peaches in my back yard. They also really like the leaves on my dwarf orange tree, and the poor tree (being so small) doesn't have many leaves.
One major problem is that squirrels in this area (especially ground squirrels) carry plague.
Is there a reason you haven't tried a Havahart trap? You'll obviously have to dispatch the squirrels somehow after you trap them, but there are lots of imaginative ways to do that.
you got hanta you might also have yersinia pestis.... plague. I will say the squirrels never touched the fruit trees until we got one of those Stark "edible kernel" apricots and then the squirrels went nuts.
then I moved into town. next door run down house housed families of squirrels in roof of porch. house sold, porch roof removed, squirrels evicted and promptly came to my house next door and began eating their way into my roof, my attic. after 1 year of metal flashing and metal edges and trying everything I had to trap kill
12 of them to hopefully kill every single one that had any memory of eating their way into my house. damn rats. I hope I also got the ones ripping the peaches off my tree. they dont just rip the peaches, they rip off the fruiting spurs as well. damn rats. IngridOn Fri, 24 Apr 2009 21:39:05 -0600, "SteveB" wrote: ing squirrels?
Killing them with these simple devices is far cheaper, and far more effective. Plus the damages they do in lessened numbers is cost effective.
Steve
I used a Tin Cat for the mice, but you have to handle them too much. I just tossed the Tin Cat in a 5 gallon bucket of water for three minutes. Now I take them out with a large metal spoon and fling them like a lacrosse toss into the chasm that borders our property for the raptors to have free lunch. Setting and resetting HavAHarts every day is a pain, not to mention cost times three or six.
Steve
Have one, but it is an inside cat. She loves to bring them in alive and play with them, sometimes allowing them to escape and go live under the fridge until I catch them.
Oh well. Whatever method you use, it'll make you feel like you're being successful.
"Phisherman" wrote:
Costs a lot more to feed a cat than a squirrel.
The domestic cat will almost always lose a fight with a squirrel... mine stay indoors, keeps the vet bills down, however they've never lost a fight with a mouse... don't even have to fight, after two days hiding under the fridge surrounded by six salivating cats the mouse just gives up by commiting suicide.
Squirrels being very territorial will protect the area around their food supply from other squirrels so there will never be too many in one area... their only real competion are the crows... if you find damaged fruit it's much more likely initiated by birds than squirrels, birds will knock fruit to the ground, eat the best parts, and then the squirrels find the pits. My veggie garden isn't far from where the squirrels hang but I've yet to see even one squirrel in there, it's mostly birds that peck the veggies. The easiest way to keep squirrels from ones food crops is to feed them something else that they like better and put it out away from your crop. There are a half dozen squirrels that live in the windbreak of 70 foot Norway spruce trees near my fruit trees. I put out peanuts, sunflower seeds, cheap stale crackers, bread scraps, and whatever bits they will eat that most folks toss in the trash anyway, they love old dried/molded cheese... I simply toss it out my side window at the same time each morning, within two minutes they arrive for their breakfast and to entertain my house cats. They never bother my fruit trees, why would they chose measly fruit pits over peanuts, sunflower seeds, and cookies... doesn't cost me $10 a year to feed the squirrels, certainly less than you'll pay for traps, and I have no aggrivation from squirrels whatsoever... even if you dispatch a few new ones will come to take their place, you'll never get them all. You can't beat squirrels at their own game so it's best to join them... I sorta feel pity for anyone with an IQ less than that of a squirrel.
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