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  • From: "Mark Angermayer" <hangermayer@isp.com>
  • To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] Squirrel control
  • Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2008 14:41:53 -0600

Barbara,
 
I have tried several methods of squirrel control.  I thought I had the problem whipped when I started feeding them cull fruit outside the fence and they were leaving my trees alone.  Alas, toward the end of the season, they broke truce and started tearing fruit from the trees.
 
Some methods I've tried:
 
Tube trap- this caught a few but the traps are made of common steel and rust something terrible.  I don't mind a rusty trap, but the spring rusted in two.  I didn't think I could find another spring, so the trap went in the trash.
 
Peanut plaster parfait-  A lot folks use this method and it works for them.  However, I couldn't get the squirrels to eat it.  In all fairness, I don't think I mixed enough peanut butter with the dry plaster of paris.  I've heard so much success with this method, I don't doubt it doesn't work if mixed correctly, but I wasn't that excited about putting poison out.  We have a lot of little kids in the neighborhood and I was afraid they might climb a tree and eat the stuff, so I really wasn't that excited about trying to make it work.
 
For the last couple weeks, I've been using a plain old havaheart squirrel trap.  So far it's working.  I've caught 7 or 8 squirrels in two weeks.  I bought it on Craigslist for 15 bucks.  I like the trap because there is no risk to children or anyone's pet cat.  The guy I bought it from didn't have any luck catching squirrels with it.  When I got it home, I figured out why.  The trip mechanism took too much pressure to trip, so I went to work on it.  I bent the catch mechanism with a pair of pliers and filed it smoother.  I then oiled all the movable parts with regular motor oil (WD 40 is a poor lubricant because it evaporates too fast).  Next I drilled and screwed a pecan to the trip plate.  To bait it, I throw a few pecans, and a dry piece of corn on the cob, in the back of the trap.  I also throw a few hedge balls around the trap.
 
I guess I don't havmuchheart, because I don't release the squirrels.  Still, no animal deserves to suffer, so I try to destroy them as humanely as possible.  I place a bag over the trap and squirt a generous amount of starting fluid (ether) into the bag and close it for about a minute.  When the squirrel is unconscious I dump the trap in a barrel of water.  I wouldn't mind eating the squirrels, but Kansas has a law you can't eat game that's been trapped.  So the squirrels go in my compost pile.
 
Mark
KS



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