Well, the rascals are back. I don't mind them eating the fruit but there have been some raccoons caught around here with rabies. The squirrels run around like crazy - more than normal - there may be something wrong them too.
So the question is.... is there anything I can do to discourage them coming in the yard or backyard trees?
I hung some of the owls with glass eyes and I think that has worked near the owls, but not the rest of the tree.
Anyway, my goal is to keep them out of the year and the trees and not just scare them with decoys.
I thought about putting a solution of red pepper in one of those aspirator bottles you connect to a hose and spraying the trees and yard.
Trap and release, shoot if you can. Red pepper flakes would not keep squirrels out of my bird feed.
A large Hav-a-hart will catch practically every thing when baited with peanut butter. I've caught numerous squirrels and a few groundhogs and raccoons but only the smaller raccoons will fit in the trap originally bought for ground hogs.
Laws vary. Around here you can trap and kill but not release but I release anyway. I'm careful with what I trap as rabies is endemic here too.
I don't know about raccoons, but in my experience you can trap and shoot all the squirrels all day long and it will make little difference if you have something they want, like fruit. If you remove one animal, there are plenty more just waiting to fill the void. To really get rid of them you would have to eliminate them all for miles surrounding your home, and that would probably only be temporary. Otherwise, you would have to get rid of whatever is attracting them.
Same here (eastern Massachusetts). And it makes sense to me - if you release a trapped squirrel elsewhere in the area, you will be overpopulating an area that's already full and that animal may die. Or it may find its way back from whence it came. Also, it can bring a disease into a previously uninfected population.
raccoons are prevalent here. doesn't matter how many we trap and move they soon return.
tall fences discourage them, but once they know there is food inside the fence they'll still come in.
electric fence does much better.
they are the reason we don't bother to grow sweet corn any longer. it's just not worth the bother. cheaper to buy a few ears in the summer when we want some. :)
squirrels are not common here. hawks will eat them...
A local public garden had a severe squirrel problem in two white mulberry trees. The squirrels would eat the new shoots before they could leaf out. Apparently, the shoots give the squirrels a buzz; it is like squirrel marajuana.
One early spring, the trees were sprayed with a watered mixture of cayanne, liquid soap, and human urine. At first, none of the gardeners wanted to do the spraying; but the donor of the urine was finally convinced to do it. This kept the squirrels away from the two trees until after they were in full leaf. The sqiurrels were not interested in the mature foliage because it did not have the "magic potient" they desired.
But that was only a temporary, one-year solution to the problem. Now those two trees have bands of aluminum flashing wrapped around their trunks. A few squirrels learned to take a running leap and clear the bands so second bands now slightly overlap above the original bands. This past summer, the trees that had appeared about to die because they did not have enough foliage looked better than they had in years.
I am going to try the aluminum bands on my peach and loquat trees this year. I will wait until just before the fruit starts to ripen -- spring for the loquat and summer for the peach. If successful, I will add bands to my grape vines.
Havahart has a large cage trap for adult raccoons, for which the best bait is sardines.
Here in southern California, red squirrels can be killed because they are not native but an import. Gray squirrels are native and protected by law. I do not care which kind I catch. I live very close to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area (a national park). Any squirrels that I catch in my medium-size Havahart trap gets released there. The Recreation Area contains many hungry coyotes, hawks, snakes, and even a few eagles and mountain lions.
we've found that the black sunflower seeds work very well and are much easier to deal with than peanut butter or cat/dog food. they seem to appeal to every critter we want to trap and move.
i'm trying to get out of the practice though as it seems so pointless and instead go after the den sites (making them less appealing to the new ones who might want to move in) and fencing off the areas that are most important. for every critter we don't have to transport it saves us a few hours of BS (which over a season can add up to a few days or weeks of lost production or farting around/napping :) ).
because i don't want to trap raccoons, skunks, possums, any longer we close the trap for the night and then open it during the day (for groundhogs aka woodchucks).
Squirrels are the easiest pesky critters to eliminate, a couple of feral cats can easily clear forty acres of all rodents. For larger critters trap and release works well... NorthernTool.com has excellent traps, I think much better than Have-A-Heart. Occasionally I have an invasion of a few possums, they are dumb so are easy to trap, I drive them a few miles away and release them at a large dairy farm, there's water and food. Once the adults are gone my feral cats take care of their juveniles. Contrary to what many think true feral cats do not hunt birds, they don't waste their time and effort hunting what will fly off... rodents are much easier prey. It's the indoor-outdoor cats that hunt birds for entertainment, it's rare they eat the birds they catch. Feral cats subsist mostly on what they catch; rodents, frogs, lizards, even some insects.
You can never eliminate all these critters but I think you can cut down the local population that sticks around your house and it takes a while for others to move in and fill the vacuum.
Mines quite old. It is somewhat clunky and I like peanut butter because it sticks to the trigger making the critter work harder making sure to trip it. It has twin doors and that prevents trapping of large raccoons as when doors fall, if anything is sticking out like a tail the critter can get out. I trapped a mother skunk once and her kids would not leave. Fortunately I got the trap open that was below my deck with a long pole. Skunks confined are said not to spray.
For raccoons it needs to be the real large Havahart. I have one (now on loan so I don't know the model or size) and despite being somewhat large the raccoons were able to trip, but get out. I think the mom would go in with the kits behind. When the door came down the kits kept it from closing and all got out. So be sure the description has large raccoon in it.
I used marshmallows. They are cheap. They worked.
Not much rabies around here. But you have to release far away. Preferably with a river in between.
At one time I did successfully eliminate the squirrel population. After some years they figured out how to get the feed from my squirrel proof bird feeder. I tried everything. Then I decided to relocate the knowledge. Now my Brooklyn row house has pretty much enclosed back yards. After many dozens of relocates the block had no more squirrels. And it worked. The next winter the squirrels that moved in didn't even realize that there was food in the feeder.
I haven't put the feeder out in years. So I cannot tell what happened next.
My double door Hav-a-hart is 37 inches but these have one door. I think the bigger one may be marginal for large raccoons. Price looks good.
I had a home made box trap made from wooden support frame and chicken wire. Door was board on grooved slider and trigger in back of trap would pull nail from slider to make it fall. I had to add a sliding nail to lock the trap shut as critter could otherwise lift door. I could diagram, but not hard to figure out.
All I caught was a skunk and was confused on what to do and had to go to work. I had called an exterminator and he wanted $200 to remove at the time (would probably be $500 today). Wife put on rain gear and removed door and skunk got out but she had run and did not get sprayed. The door got lost so I trashed the trap and got the Hav-a-hart now about
40 years old.
Son used it in his house to get a squirrel trapped in his heatilator type fire place. He removed a panel and squirrel got into baited trap a day later.
These critters can cause real damage as another son had the same problem in his town house where squirrel died and it cost him nearly $1,000 to have squirrel removed and damages to fix the wall where they had to break in to access it.
There are special traps for skunks. I get lots of skunks here but I don't mess with them. They arrive at night to eat the dried cat food I leave for the ferals, I wouldn't care only they turn the entire bowl over and make a mess... the food falls into the holes in the mat and even they can't get to it.
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Joiner and Ebenezer are best buds, they hunt as a team. Heated shelters and water:
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Even at well below zero Candy hunts in the snow:
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Ferals as kittens, all born in my barn:
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It's very rare I see a squirrel here.
The best way to dissuade squirrels is to keep feral cats around. Feral cats are big and strong, twenty pounds of solid muscle and designed to be hunting machines. Cats do no damage to house or garden but they sure make quick work of any rodents. It gets cold here in the northern Catskills in winter so I provide heated shelters and heated water bowls, but the cats more than earn their keep... and they are gorgeous to watch their antics, they love to play in the snow.
My son's have cats but when a squirrel gets in from the roof there is nothing you can do other than makes sure things are sealed up. We had cats too but got plenty of mice in parts of the house. I recall cat sitting endlessly at wall as mouse was on the inside of the wall board. I had to drill a hole in the wall and put in poison to get it.
Our area is too suburban for feral cats yet enough open, mostly wooded areas full of pesky critters and deer. You can't rid the area of them but you can dissuade them.
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