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  • From: list@ginda.us
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Disappointment with resurgent predators
  • Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2007 07:53:58 -0500

Predators make a small difference in my everyday life: I bring my out-door cat in by dusk because of them, and despite my best efforts, lost a cat to one, probably a fisher. The town had a coyote den a few years ago and the mom killed everything she could get her teeth into trying to wean her younsters. In addition to wildlife, she killed a huge number of domestic cats and a handful of small dogs. The animal control officer said "that's what they do, keep your animals indoors" until she took a small dog one afternoon while it was hanging out with its people in a tiny fenced backyard. That is, she ignored the people, jumped the fence, ran up to the house, grabbed the dog, and ran. She could just as easily have taken a baby, and at that point animal control and the police decided she actually was dangerous, and shot her. The rest of the den dispersed, although people still see coyotes around.

My 1/3 acre sports 10-12 mature oaks (depending on how you count them) and the neighbors have oaks, too. We get many more acorns than the squirrels can eat. Charlie, maybe your nuts are just so delicious the squirrels can't wait to get at them. :) Come to think of it, I don't see quite as many squirrels as I did a few years back, (and I do see more hawks) but even when we seemed to be over-run with squirrels, we had plenty of acorns to go around. I joke to my children that the local squirrels are fat and happy because their ancestors had the forethought to plant lots of oak trees.

Ginda Fisher
eatern Mass., zone 6

On Feb 16, 2007, at 5:33 PM, BekeeprTop@aol.com wrote:

When I first planted nuts to grow nut trees, in 1982, I went to the extension
service and asked them which predators went after squirrels. [This was back
when each Massachusetts County had an extension service] The answer was:
pine martens, fishers, and red-tailed hawks. The only one we had then was the
red-tailed, but they didn't seem to make much dent on the squirrels. The
fishers had returned here, no doubt: they've been photographed on
automatic-photographing trail equipment, and last year I saw a road- killed one driving one
day, and stopped to look it over since I'd never seen one. I could see why
they're sometimes called "fisher-cats", as their appearance is vaguely cat-like,
but their bodies are much slimmed in the middle making real cats look very
heavy-bodied by comparison. But they have lots of black hair and long
barracuda-like teeth. Someone who's seen them in motion says they're very fast up in the
trees, they actually go up in the trees and take the squirrels from there.
So the big question is, when are these resurgent predators going to start
making an apparant difference in our everyday lives? There sure are a lot of
squirrels...lord knows what the squirrels eat to get by...the squirrels take any
pecan or hickory before the nut inside can every begin to fill out, so how are
the squirrels taking advantage of the food offered by the nut tree? I went
for a walk in the dead of night the other night, went to a nearby hill for a
little run, and got to thinking, in 10-years, this will no longer be possible. I
will not be able to go running in the woods in 10-years. The mountain lions
will have returned by then. Where the mountain lions are, no bike riding or
running is advised, fast motion stimulates any type cats to run down the fast
moving object. I went to a lecture sponsored by 5 different mountain lion
watch and conservation organizations. After an absence of many decades, mountain
lions have returned to Missouri. Mountain lions have returned to Missouri
because their prey, the deer, have returned to Missouri. In the east, deer
double each 10 years. Already, we have had multiple unverified sitings of
mountain lion less than 10 miles from Boston! In Missouri, the sitings have been
verified. Its just a question of time. However, the fishers and coyotes here
have returned in force, and I can't see they've yet changed our environmental
conditions dramatically. Do you see any substantial difference?
Charlie Paradise, prob. will be first in Massachusetts to be attacked by
mountain lion
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