North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Kieran and Donna" <redherring@tnaccess.com>]

Someone who moved up here from Florida said that his gardening friend back
there had bought a "have a heart" type trap, which he had heartlessly used
to catch and drown 50+ squirrels in a matter of weeks. ( I naturally thought
of how much stew could be made out of them...)  I am sure that the intense
population pressure will bring more into the area, but surely the thinning
will  allow him to harvest a bit more of his crops.
    I haven't had to deal with squirrels in my garden (in the country)
except down in Florida where in dry weather they would chew up green
tomatoes (spitting out the bits) for the moisture.  People said if you left
water out for them, they wouldn't do that.  But our place is getting so
grown up that squirrels cleaned out one peach tree long before they got
ripe.  We cut branches off a pine leading to another peach and so far they
haven't gone for it.  I've been considering what Dan Hemenway said, that
some years they ate a lot of nuts, and some years they ate a lot of
squirrels.  Will a BB gun with pellets work on squirrels? A 22 seems like
overkill, and I remember shotgun shells are expensive.
    I decided to plant some black walnuts rather than pecans because I see
in town where some pecan trees have nearly their entire crop eaten before it
is ripe.  At least with BKs I have a fighting chance, and I have actually
managed to get a graft to take and make a good strong leader on the only BK
on our property.  Thin shelled black walnuts are well worth the cracking, I
picked up 20 gallons of them from 2 trees at MTSU last year and we enjoyed
them very much.  Even with a walnut cracker, the difference is significant.
Donna