Field of Science

Dear Squirrels

Dear Squirrels,
Sorry you found nothing edible in that pot of petunias you dup up yesterday.  Such a waste of effort even now as the petunia season is drawing to a close.  Perhaps you did not notice that the petunia was still flowering nicely.  And the management would like to point out that you found nothing in that pot the day before yesterday, or the day before that, or the day before that.  Without doubt the digging is easy because the potting soil is so much nicer than our clay laden midwestern soil, but the ease of effort does little to enhance your rate of success.  Clearly such futile foraging behavior is not diminishing your Darwinian fitness or the stupid-pot-digging genes and this greatly saddens us because you have not proven to be quick learners.  So try to understand our feelings about this.  After all, weren't we nice enough to give you enough squash seeds to choke a horse?  And yet, you still felt compelled to dig up the pot of petunias, again.  In the future we may have to resort to tiny land mines or adopt greyhound or get some recipes for squirrel stew.  We hope you understand it's nothing personal.
The Management.

3 comments:

Diane said...

My daughter has resorted to a rock mulch for her patio plants while her neighbor has a fork inserted tine-side up in his potted tomato. I have used pine cones to deter cats but that might not work with squirrels.

Kraneia said...

There's stuff you can pick up at Walmart, it's called "Critter Ridder" and comes in little granules. To squirrels (and other pesky critters, but not people) it smells like rotten eggs and hot peppers. Very effective at discouraging them from digging and making them look elsewhere for food.

In this case I don't think they are looking for food so much as burying it--I had problems with squirrels digging in my flowerbox last year (no plants in it, just dirt) Next spring I had little oak trees sprouting in my flowerbox where they'd forgotten the acorns...

Good luck!
Scratch

Angel The Alien said...

LOL! The squirrels dug up my mom's gardens over the summer, and she got so mad, she threw away my dad's bird feeder because she said it was attracting the squirrels! It is definitely weird how they pull things up, and just leave them laying there, as if to taunt you!