Another young, green tomato on the deck yesterday morning. Not how I like to start the day... I had been lax with the vinegar soaked rags. Been raining a lot and that dilutes it. I will have to redouble my efforts... Or, where do I get some Red-Tailed Hawks? (I don't think coyotes or foxes exist where I live, in the city.)
"Ground Squirrels are active during the day and the nocturnal Barn Owl will not help with a squirrel problem. However, in areas of infestation, you can erect a substantial post of 20-25 feet in height to provide a perch from which hawks will hunt during the day. Red-Tailed Hawks in particular will hunt ground squirrels. If your vineyard is enclosed in deer fencing, you may wish to cut several coyote sized holes in the bottom of your fence to allow easy access for coyote, bobcat and fox. These animals are very good at hunting ground squirrels and rabbits. If you are concerned about these predators chewing drip lines, place a few pans underneath your drip lines to collect water for their use during the dry months."
I have heard of some people planting tomatoes, etc in another part of their yard and leaving that for the squirrels etc. Is that so very different? Though it just seems like a bad idea, and I would attract more, and a larger population than there should be.
I've had problems this year and put out the old Havahart trap. Caught and released 6 squirrels before I caught the real culprit, a raccoon who now lives in a more affluent neighborhood.
I advise buying the biggest Havahart trap as the largest raccoons can escape without it latching. Peanut butter is universal bait, I've caught squirrels, raccoons and groundhogs with it - once even a bird and a skunk.
New ones will just move in... My NIL cousin has four acres in the country and has killed 43 squirrels this year. They've gotten into his wiring and caused lots of damage besides just stealing tomatoes.
I live in a semi-rural area too. Figure I just remove the creatures that are bothering me and it will take a while for others to take their place. Since my trapping venture over a week ago, I have not seen a squirrel since.
Last Monday morning I found a very freshly dead male fox squirrel in front of the house (and collected the corpse for My Daughter the Zoologist).
By noon, and through the rest of the day, there were at least three male squirrels chasing, fighting, biting, tail-flicking, growling and sqealing their way around our yard. Apparently the Capo di tutti capi squirrel snuffing it left a power vaccuum. They must have settled things in short order--the next day everything was back to normal.
(Squirrels are excluded from the vegetable garden during the growing season by a carefully reinforced fence with a charge wire at the top.)
I wonder how long a mouse can survive? I had one in a trap in a brown paper bag once in the morning and assumed it was dead, but was running late for work and so decided to deal with it after work... When I got home, the trap was empty.
A little off topic, but apropos to the revival of the mouse but regarding humans:
"What happens when we die - wouldn't we all like to know? We can't bring people back from the dead to tell us but in some cases, we almost can. Resuscitation medicine is now sometimes capable of reviving people after their hearts have stopped beating and their brains have flat lined."
"[Dr. Sam Parnia:] So today when we define someone as being dead, we look at those three criteria - no heartbeat, no respirations, and we check the pupils of the eye for a reflex that when it's absent, it tells us that the brain stem and the brain is no longer functioning. The person is motionless - and they're dead, and we define them as dead.
However, what we've now discovered - in the past decade or so - is that actually, it's only after a person dies. So in other words, when someone has actually reached that point and they've become a corpse, that the cells inside the body start to undergo their own process of death, and that the period in which the cells die is variable depending on the organs, but it certainly goes on to hours of time.
So for instance, brain cells will die at about eight hours; again, there is some variation, but around eight hours after a person has died. And therefore, our work in resuscitation science is to try to study the processes that are going on in a person after they've died, but before they've reached the point of complete, irreversible and irretrievable cell damage such that no matter what we do, we can't bring them back.
And if we manage to restore oxygen and nutrients back to those cells before they've reached that point, we are able to successfully bring someone back to life. And that's why today, with numerous advances that have taken place in the field of resuscitation science, we have managed to push back that boundary to well beyond the 10-, 20-minute time frame that had been perceived in the past, into many hours of death."
formatting link
'With today's medicine, we can bring people back to life up to one, maybe two hours, sometimes even longer, after their heart stopped beating and they have thus died by circulatory failure. In the future, we will likely get better at reversing death.
formatting link
"He [Sam Parnia] specializes in people who survive cardiac arrest. Eighty to 90 percent of these patients do not have stories of bright lights, tunnels, out-of-body experiences and luminous beings."
I prefer snap traps. I caught one in a holding trap that I had not checked for a while and just got a stinking carcass. Poison inside the house can also lead to stink. Glue traps are torture. I've seen them gnaw off a leg to try to escape. As I discovered, the snap traps may not just break their neck but suffocate them. Still preferred to suffering in other traps.
I believe life span of mice and rats is about 3 years and most that don't suffer predation, expire of cancer. Mice are used to test chemical toxicity as they do not have a throw-up mechanism. The chemicals are injected down their throats with a blunt syringe.
i've not seen too many of those here. we have something a bit longer and skinny (similar otherwise) that we call a squash bug, but perhaps it is the same bug.
i've never seen the type of damage to peppers as described in the wiki article. we don't grow fruits other than strawberries.
plenty of them around in the spring and fall, but the rest of the summer i don't see them much at all.
that is what these do too.
they stink like green apples when overly disturbed.
i'll have to capture one and get a good picture to compare.
I've been reading about those on the W3 for some time, now. As far as I can determine, they've not yet made it down to Florida but it seems inevitable. And when they do, they're certain to find it the same bug Nirvana as has a host of other imports. We do have a wide variety of green and brown "shield" bugs and of the related "leaf footed" bugs. One or two varieties of shield bugs are "bugiverous"; unfortunately it is virtually impossible to identify them without first killing them. In addition to transmitting viruses (virii ?) all of the plant-feeding species do immediate and lasting damage to leaves as well as to fruit. They are particularly debilitating to tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and beans. I know of no effective control except, perhaps, for carbaryl ("Sevin"), which is too extreme for me to consider. Also, surrounded as I am by a broad expanse of native habitat, control efforts are futile. A wide array of commercial and of DIY stink bug traps, including one developed by University of Florida, exists but, as far as I can determine, they all trap too many innocent bystanders to suit me so I just live with the bugs, accepting the damage they do as sort of an "interloper's tax". However, I do believe I'd try to devise some method of screening the target plants from their attacks before ceasing cultivation entirely. I suppose that if I were gardening for the market, my attitude might be a little different but for now I'm content just to skoosh the adults and to drown the nymphs in soapy water. Nymphs are easy to spot because of their bright color and are easy to catch due to their habit of releasing and dropping to the ground when disturbed. Gratifying but of no net benefit in controlling their number.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.