North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[tanis cuff <tanistanis@hotmail.com>]

Here we had enough late frosts last spring that my apple & pear trees didn't 
set much fruit.  Then the dry weather meant there was nothing else for 
squirrels to eat than the remaining fruits.  I saw mostly the smaller red 
squirrels, also called pine squirrels here.  They left only one tree with 
small apple-crabs get nearly ripe.
Through the hot-dry I kept fresh birdbaths on the ground to serve as waterers 
for wildlife.  (I started this years ago, when I read somewhere that much of 
rabbits' feeding & damage is for moisture, not food.)  I often saw the red 
squirrels drinking, so I believe they chose the green apples as food, not 
moisture source.  The only consolations was that the squirrels actually ate 
the entire fruits--not just nibble & discard, and I was able to watch 
wildlife activity from the one room I was able to keep mostly below 80 
degrees.
tc, south central WI

----------------------------------------
> Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2012 22:58:09 -0400
> From: sdw12986
> To: nafex
> Subject: [nafex] More on squirrels
>
> 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)
> __________________
>