Friday, November 07, 2008

Not nuts

To the squirrels that keep digging in my flowerbed:

They're tulip, hyacinth, and crocus bulbs. Same ones as yesterday. Which were the same ones as the day before. They're not magically going to turn into walnuts or something. Quit digging them up and then leaving them lying around.

Don't make me break out the cayenne pepper. You will not be happy.

Edited to add: I found a recipe online for a cayenne pepper squirrel repellent. As a stopgap until I get to the store for a small bottle of hot pepper sauce, I've scattered ground black pepper all over the flowerbed.

Wish me luck, people. If decades' worth of Warner Brothers cartoons are any sort of indicator, this battle is going to end with a large smoking hole in the ground, me sitting on a cloud wearing wings and playing a harp, and a squirrel covered in soot, holding a crocus bulb in his little paws.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You will never win the squirrel wars. What you have to do is distract them.

We feed the birds in the garden from wire-mesh peanut feeders, which the squirrels love to work at with their ingenious little teeth until the nuts just pour out.

So - bending with the wind, we now have one feeder with holes that I've put in, big enough that the squirrels can take nuts without a struggle. It works - they leave the others alone.

--V said...

The black pepper I scattered seems to be working. For now.

I was talking today with some coworkers who garden, and I mentioned offering the squirrels something else to eat. Both people I talked to said it wouldn't matter -- they'll still go after the bulbs. Though my one coworker said squirrels don't like daffodil bulbs, so maybe next year I'll plant those.

Got the cayenne pepper sauce. Now I need a spray bottle.