Squirrel Wars--Episode 3,253

SQUIRREL WARS

EPISODE 3,253

Not long ago

In a galaxy 'way too close to home...

When we built the original raised bed garden about ten years ago, it wasn't long before the local ground squirrels (Spermophilus beecheyi) decided we had opened a new restaurant especially for them. Cindy was so disgusted when, time after time, she would decide that a juicy tomato was just about ripe for the picking--tomorrow. And that night the squirrel would decide, "Tonight," and leave the half eaten remains behind for her to find the next morning.

When she finally picked the first ungnawed tomato off the vines, I joked that it had cost us about a thousand dollars to get that tomato.

That stiffened her resolve to keep the varmints out and led her to develop a brilliant system of three foot tall plexiglass panels that fit inside the edge of the bed. Each panel is screwed to garden stakes on each side that can be pushed down into the dirt of the bed, although getting them down into the dirt was awkward and sometimes difficult. Since the stakes are inside the plexiglass, the squirrels can't get traction on anything to climb up and get at the sweet, juicy tomatoes. The panels can be lifted out to work on the garden and then replaced to keep the critters out. She later refined that system by adding PVC tubes for each of the stakes to slide into to make panel removal and replacement easier. That system has worked pretty well and we've enjoyed many, many tomatoes since without having to look for squirrel bites.

However, when we built the new beds this year, she decided to rotate the tomato patch into the first new bed, but not build panels to surround it. Of course the varmints applauded that decision. Today she had to throw away a big, fat, juicy Carbon, supposed to be one of the tastiest black heirloom tomatoes. Evidently the squirrel agreed with that description of it, because only half of it was left.

We keep hoping the red shouldered hawk that works our canyon will take out the squirrel some day, but so far the critter is thriving. It's illegal to trap and deport them, and we can't bring ourselves to poison any creature, so I think next year's tomato garden will have panels again.