North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Joe and Ellen Hecksel <jhecksel@voyager.net>]

Hello all:

So far, no Japanese Beetles.

However, I am suffering from a plague of woodchucks!

They stripped the mulberry trees of their leaves.  Few things are as sad 
as seeing a promising graft stripped of leaves, and even worse, broken off.

We were on vacation for 8 days.  We visited New Orleans (great rates on 
rooms this time of year for some reason) and drove home via Mississippi, 
Alabama, Ga, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio.

Half the garden was flattened.  The Hubbard squash was reduced to leaf 
stems.  War was declared.

Mr. Internet was not much help.  "First" all the internet experts 
agreed, "start your control efforts in April or May at the latest."  Drat!

I called my neighbor Kirk who is an avid trapper.  He loaned me 6 
Conibear traps.  I already had two 160 Conibears.  They are all deployed.

There are a few places that are not conducive to Conibear traps.  We 
have a new puppy so I don't want to use them close to the house.  Also, 
there are a few holes that are in HUGE Poison Ivy patches.  So the one 
live trap will also get a work-out.

Any advice on bait?

One neighbor lady claims that you can catch ANYTHING using marshmallows. 
 They certainly are cheap and delightful to munch on if you need 
sustenance during the arduous task of lugging the enormous live trap 
around.  Mr Internet said to use the leaves of the plant they were 
chowing down on.  Too late to use squash leaves.  Other suggestions were 
apples or carrots.  One source said to pre-bait the area to get them 
hooked on those delicacies.  That makes sense to me.

Any advice will be much appreciated.  The quicker I can put a big dent 
in their population the better my plants will recover.

-Joe