Re: Squirrels are great.
Originally Posted by
Mups
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One of my near neighbours had an enormous Walnut tree in his garden, and as you can imagine, there were many squirrels around harvesting the nuts.
They would scamper along the top of my fences, help themselves to my bird food, then leap into the big tree to gather some walnuts.
My dogs would go absolutely bonkers and chase after them.
Mostly what annoyed me was, early morning before the dogs were about, the squirrels would come in to my garden and keep digging out my pots and tubs to bury the walnuts in.
Bloomin' compost everywhere, which they threw about with gay abandon.
Apart from the mess every day, plants and shrubs which I had mulched in bark for winter protection, were all dug up again, and the bark chippings throw everywhere, often exposing the plant roots.
Everyday I had to re-cover the plants, and the next day it would all be dug out again.
Then the following year any nuts which I had missed, would start growing, so I had them to pull up as well.
Eventually the tree had to come down, as it was discovered the huge roots were under my kitchen floor. My insurers were not happy and wrote to the chap.
Since the tree was taken down, I do not get half as many furry visitors.
Mups, the same thing happened to my brother. He had a black walnut tree in the yard, and the roots eventually worked their way under the foundation of the house.
The squirrels seem to always make their way into my garden or my flower pots to bury the nuts. I didn't put down the mulch this year. Too much mess, they are going to dig either way.......
But I do love the squirrels and think they are very intelligent little creatures. They all do the same thing, lift one arm when they are begging. If you throw out a bunch of peanuts, all shelled, they gather quickly, two or three in their mouth at the same time, and they try to cram more in. They actually jump over each other like a game of checkers to get the peanuts.
The neighbours hate me to feed the squirrels though, I have to go into the woods, they meet me there. That is our new system.