blurose
Garden Ornament
- Joined
- May 25, 2008
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- 313
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My resident family of ground squirrels are still cute, now 1/2 grown babies, but they have become lazy and a trial. The parents and the older sibling venture out into the neighboring fields for food each day, but these babies are weaned now and have started raiding my garden. 
un I wanna call the squirrel police but I don't know the number. The first thing they did was start eating my beet tops, which I was okay with as I'm gonna pull them all up real soon anyways. Then, they went after my 1ft tall okra plants and over a three-day period stripped every leaf off of 16 plants. Because I am disabled I had to wait on my DS to cage off the okra and the sprouting corn (which they started munching on as well). So, this morning we looped 1-inch PVC pipes over the garden bed, draped and zip-tied chicken wire and stapled the bottom of it to the railroad ties that make up the garden beds. We had to do this also to the second bed of corn but used rebar stakes on 4 corners to anchor the chickenwire. The second corn bed looks like a big chickenwire mushroom cap now. 
Several hours after caging off the garden I watched the squirrels out my kitchen window, testing the cages and trying to see if they could get in. After only a few minutes they gave up and started digging up the weeds, which is what the rest of the back yard is made of. As an afterthought I figured they'd pretty soon be after my nice sweet and tender basil in my herb garden, so I fashioned a chickenwire cage for that as well. I think I'll be able to remove the cages from the okra and corn when it gets tall enough that they can't reach the leaves anymore. 
Thank goodness they aren't TREE squirrels. 
they are a vegetable of their own. 
I'll NEVER do that. I'll maybe try them like I cook spinach, just in a little butter and garlic until wilted.
