North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Nathan Torgerson <nathantorgerson@yahoo.com>]

The organza bags I am using to bag some of my plums have draw strings on them. After tightening the strings, I take the leng strings that are left and tie it around the branch.  My hope is that the squirrels will be disappointed if they can't get the bag off of the tree and stop wrecking more of them.  I won't know for a few weeks if it works or not.

 

One thing I have done to squirrels is shock them.  On one of my bird feeders, I attached a metal plate to the feeding area and had another metal plate about 3 inches away from it (This was slot feeder that was attached to my deck railing.)  I then attached an electric fence to the two plates.  The space between the metal plates was large enough so the birds could eat, but the squirrels were big enough that their feet were on one plate when their snout was touching the other.  I have about 20 minutes of video showing them getting shocked, at times springing up several inches and once flying off of the deck rail.   After a few attempts , it kept them at bay because it obviously didn't feel very good.

 

One of the problems was that the base of my feeder was wood, so that when it got wet, the birds could get a little zing too.

 

You might be able to do something like that on a tree.  If not, I would do it just for entertainment somewhere else!

 

Nate

Stephen Sadler <Docshiva@Docshiva.org> wrote:

> This year I had planned on trying a carrot-and-stick approach: one of the
> spray-on hot/bitter tasting organic squirrel repellants, and a squirrel
> feeder. This sort of approach has worked for me before in dealing with
> other large pests.
>
> I may not need to put the plan into
>  action - someone, probably next door,
> poisoned the rodents. I've said a little prayer for them, that they go on
> to a better place, and never ever come back....
>
> Stephen Sadler
> USDA 9, AHS heat zone 8, 
> Sacramento CA - Mediterranean climate
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
> [mailto:nafex-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of
> rmelrose@danvilleVT.net
> Sent: Monday, June 05, 2006 7:12 AM
> To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
> Cc: rmelrose@DanvilleVT.net
> Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Bagging, squirrels and plums
>
> Mark, thanks for the pointer to the gardenweb discussion. It sounds as
> though this is not going to fool the squirrels -- for whom I have some
> respect as an enemy -- but I will give it a try in the hope that the local
> squirrels are dim. In fact it took them a few years to learn that plums are
> edible (they learnt on a Santa Rosa I used to have before it died of some
> sort of aggressive canker)
>  but once they learnt, the knowledge seems to have
> passed to subsequent generations.
>
> Unfortunately the wrapping, and spraying (thanks Bruce), suggestions are
> impractical here. The squirrels have access higher in the tree from all
> sides -- the houses are close together, there is a phone pole and a crab
> apple. So there is no chance of keeping them out of the tree.
>
> As I said, I am trying some baggies -- but I suspect the plums will
> split. In Vermont where I have apples growing the bags work very well
> against the various bugs, but when I tried them on pears (these were
> Summer Crisp, Luscious and Golden Spice) they split badly. Since the pears
> don't suffer much from bug attack I have given up on that and just do a
> couple of hundred apples.
>
> Richard
>
>
>
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