Smarter Than the Average Squirrel?

September 22nd, 2015

Yeah, we vegetable-gardeners have to cope with heat, drought, surprise frosts, assorted bugs and diseases, the occasional hailstorm and much more. But anyone who’s grown vegetables for long would agree that the most aggravating challenge is animal damage.

Squirrels have nothing better to do all day than figure out where their next meal is coming from.

You go to all of the trouble and expense, only to go out one morning and find half the garden chewed to bits by (take your pick) deer, groundhogs, rabbits, squirrels, voles or chipmunks.

Our backyard zoos have them all.

Agitated gardeners come to me all the time, hoping to find a horticultural Dr. Phil who can make their vegetable life worth living with some sage animal-protecting advice.

Here’s a typical story from one Hershey gardener: “Our corn was doing great this year, but then the d**** squirrels climbed up the stalks, stripped the husks and ate the corn right off the cobs! This has never happened before. Why this year?! My husband painted hot sauce on the ears, but they seemed to like that even better! Please help! If they touch the tomatoes, I will be REALLY angry!”

Who knows why this yard suddenly became the site of a squirrel cornfest?

We rack our brains trying to figure out what we did or didn’t do and get upset at the audacity of it all. From our point of view, these animals are rude, ungrateful thieves.

The animal’s viewpoint is much simpler… more like, “See corn, eat corn.”

That’s about as complicated as it gets in a squirrel brain.

Applying the hot sauce was a plausible idea. However, in this case, it must have been a Mexican squirrel – or at least one that likes hot sauce on his corn.

One strategy that non-shooting-mad gardeners use is the diversionary tactic of setting out something squirrels like better than the crops they’re growing.

Our Hershey gardener, for example, might try tacos and burritos with a side of refried beans.

More often, gardeners report success by diverting squirrels with peanut butter, bird seed and corn cobs.

That might work, but when you think about it, if you’re going to spend money on peanut butter and bird seed, why not just go buy corn for yourself?

That might make sense to real people, but it’s not an option for gardeners. The point isn’t logic or even saving money but the idea of growing it yourself. There’s invaluable satisfaction in that.

When animals interrupt this process, gardeners just get more determined (and a few other things that I can’t print here).

That’s when you see gardeners spending ridiculous amounts of time and money growing 2 puny ears of corn when they could’ve just gone to the farmers market and bought a dozen for $4.

I have great respect for farmers and fruit-growers, by the way.

Some gardeners discourage squirrels and other four-legged garden-eating machines by using various repellents.

One of the most popular seems to be spreading coffee grounds over the ground at the base of plants. I can’t vouch for its effectiveness first-hand, but coffee grounds do add nitrogen to the soil. Just don’t overdo it or you’ll make the soil too acidy.

Having a garden that smells like a Starbucks shop is at least better than one that’s been treated with cow poop.

Blood meal is another recommended rodent repellent. Other commercial concoctions employ odors such as rotten eggs, mint and/or garlic.

A fence with the top left unsecured (i.e. no support stakes) sometimes discourages groundhogs.

When it comes right down to it, though, fencing is really the only decent chance we have.

Fences keep out rabbits pretty well, and partly sunken/top-unsecured ones discourage at least some groundhogs. An 8- to 10-foot fence or two parallel 5-footers usually stop deer. But since squirrels are such adept climbers, you have to totally enclose your plants to stop them.

That means pounding stakes around the garden and stapling mesh, hardware cloth or window screening all around them and across the top.

Let an opening of some sort so you can get inside. But if not, hey, at least the corn didn’t get eaten!

Even fencing isn’t 100-percent certain. I’ve seen rabbits chew through my landscape-lighting wires and squirrels eat my neighbor’s patio cushions.

If ordinary fencing fails, there’s always radioactive, foot-thick lead with concertina wire across the top and a 6-foot deep moat with alligators around the perimeter.

Yeah, it might run you a few hundred thousand dollars, but I’ll bet you’ll get some corn that year.

It’d be worth it, too, knowing that we gardeners really are smarter than the average squirrel. We are, aren’t we?