North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["William C. Garthright" <billg@inebraska.com>]

> If birds get tangle trap on them they will most likely die.  I have 
> seen a gooed up bird hopping on the turf near a tree where tangle trap 
> was fairly horizontally applied.  I was able to clean the bird's 
> feathers with a solvent but it would have died otherwise.  If you 
> don't want to kill a lot of birds I suggest removing lower branches. 


I used tangletrap one year as an insect barrier, and I found a couple of 
other problems, too. First, the stuff collected so much wind-blown trash 
that it very quickly ceased to be a barrier at all. It really wasn't 
worth the effort. Of course, it's pretty windy here in Nebraska. And I 
don't know if that would matter for squirrels (or for birds getting in it).

The second problem was that it's a real mess if you have to work around 
it. It seems to last forever, and I was always getting into it while 
trying to thin fruit, weed under the trees, or whatever. And then it's 
almost impossible to remove (well, I suppose that's why the squirrels 
would want to avoid it). You may be less of a klutz than I am, but I 
hated it. I'm not surprised that birds wouldn't be able to remove it 
from their feathers, and since I don't like the idea of torturing them 
to death, I suppose that's another reason to skip it.

Bill
Lincoln, NE (zone 5)

--
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