North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Steve <sdw12986@aol.com>]

Back in August I started complaining about the squirrels taking every 
single pear before they were half grown. They also had completely eaten 
all of my early corn and most of the late corn. Later, they took what 
was left of the late apples, though the blue jays had pecked most of 
them anyway.
Their most recent adventure came when my wife noticed a squirrel on our 
deck eating something she couldn't figure out at first. It turned out to 
be a beet. The squirrels were pulling the beets. I went out and pulled 
the rest. At least the beet crop was one where I got far more than the 
squirrels did. I found one "beet" with no top at all. It turned out to 
be an apple buried in the beet row. I washed it off and later peeled and 
ate it. I think it was an Arlet.
My real reason for writing is that it seems I wasn't the only one to 
suffer more squirrel damage than ever before. This AP article appeared 
in our local news paper, then I heard it on the radio and then TV. The 
other day I found it again as a feature on weather.com and that one is 
easy to share here:
http://www.weather.com/news/agriculture/squirrel-population-boom-20121016

Steve (in the new squirrel capitol of the Adirondacks)