Danged &%$#@+(^$ Critters!

[GoDawgs]

Some years back a red tail hawk tried to snatch up one of the cats but wasn't ready for the flurry of claws it encountered. It left and the cat was OK.

[JRinPA]

The squirrels got into the corn, yesterday I found it, about 4 or 5 wrecked and a few others opened a bit. They started to brown the silk 3 days back, not there the next day, so yesterday I found damage. I had the socks in hand yesterday but too late. So i socked everything that was ripening and tore off a lot of hopeless side shoot cobs and the side shoots themselves. ( I definitely need to go back to breaking off side shoots, they do nothing with their cobs for the most part and the pollen is too low anyway, and just generally suck up resources for nothing.)

I was short on socks so I took two that looked ripe.

So socks went on yesterday, no further damage today. I was going to garlic spray them but maybe don't have to. I don't have any hot peppers as yet to make garlic/pepper spray. I took one more that looked ripest. Cooked all three today and they were barely ripe, tasted good but not filled out, I like about three more days, then a five day window to eat them.

I think the supersweet is so sweet smelling that they attack it before it is really ripe, compared to the incredible SE that I would get a few pickings first and then they'd attack. I just didn't have socks with when they started darkening the silk, and paid for it.

[GoDawgs]

The squirrels got into the corn, yesterday I found it, about 4 or 5 wrecked and a few others opened a bit. They started to brown the silk 3 days back, not there the next day, so yesterday I found damage. I had the socks in hand yesterday but too late. So i socked everything that was ripening and tore off a lot of hopeless side shoot cobs and the side shoots themselves. ( I definitely need to go back to breaking off side shoots, they do nothing with their cobs for the most part and the pollen is too low anyway, and just generally suck up resources for nothing.)

I feel your pain, JR! They always start when the corn is just short of being fully ready. But now you're good to go, I hope.

Interesting about removing the extra shoots as your reasoning seems right. I might consider that next year. Some secondaries that silk right near the end of pollen drop sometimes make but they're smaller ears. I got about a dozen that were about 4-5" long when I took down the stalks. Short but filled out. Most don't make though.

[worth1]

I've watched the field corn go from a beautiful green to ready to harvest with a combine in a matter of a month.

[maxjohnson]

Funniest thing happened today. I was sitting on my deck late at night and eating chicken drumstick. I left my dish with the chicken bone on the deck floor. Racoon sneaking around the garden and saw me, I just looked back at it. Moment later it circled around the garden behind my back, steal the chicken bone and ran away. It was touching the bone a few times with its paw as I watch it before finally grabbing with its mouth and ran away.

[Setec Astronomy]

I just caught a groundhog on my deck! I went out to check my plants and there he was cowering under the railing; I expected him to jump off the side like a squirrel, but he didn't (once my brain caught up I realized groundhogs don't jump). This is the second year in a row a groundhog has learned to climb the deck stairs. Fortunately it doesn't look like he ate anything, I have tons of tomatoes starting to ripen on the lower trusses that he'd likely be able to reach.

[bower]

My vole is back too, and cuss-ed as ever. Seems to be really fond of slug baits, but requires some tender little seedlings to wash it down. Anything but carrots. So if a vole eats your peas, plant carrots?

[MissS]

Recently we have had a huge influx of squirrels, gray squirrels, red squirrels and black squirrels. Last year we only had 2-3 squirrels. I was talking to a neighbor about them and said that I thought that someone was releasing them here. He said, yes they are because I saw them opening a trap and letting one out. Oh great.

I now have a live trap set to get them before they get my tomatoes. This week I caught a opossum which I don't consider a pest. When I found her she was nursing a litter of little furless babies. They were released. Yesterday I caught a baby raccoon. I used to raise baby orphaned raccoon's so it was taken for a drive and released in a forest preserve. It was big enough to be without it's mother.

I sure am catching a variety of creatures in my garden. All of them are potential tomato thieves. I thought that it was just the squirrels digging in the garden but maybe I am wrong.

[GoDawgs]

It's so odd this year. We were inundated with squirrels last year, more than I've ever seen here. This year there seems to be a whole lot less and so far hardly any squirrel damage to the tomatoes. They hit the corn a little but I chalk that up to me not having the netting around the corn totally secured to the ground.

I still have the same yellow squash plants that were planted out way back around the end of April and that's totally abnormal. I still won't let the name of the missing party pooper pass my lips but it's never happened before.

The pickleworms have moved on. Maybe we'll escape a second wave.

Just now the stink bugs and leaf-footeds are starting to ramp up in numbers, mainly on the field peas so those got a dose of pyrethrin the other evening.

Otherwise, I'm enjoying a lot lower level of insect pressure and am wondering if a freeze in mid March had anything to do with that. Probably not as it's happened before to no effect. Now having said that, I'm quite sure the garden gods will send a horde of something my way!

[JRinPA]

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We finished out the first block of corn yesterday. No further damage. And even some that had been ripped open at the silk, when immature, were good a week later after covering with socks.

There is a groundhog hole under the trellis I put up for squash. It is a jungle. I took a pic a few days back, then ran a hose down there and filled it, took under 10 gallons. Nothing swam out. A couple days later I hit it again after dark. I have yet to see one there, before or since.

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[Setec Astronomy]

Hm, I never thought of the hose trick.

[bower]

This is just a doomed year for peas... This is what I found when I stepped out after the rain today.

pea-caterpillar-927.JPG

pea-caterpillar-930.JPG

I wonder if they'll discourage the vole...

[bower]

Happened on this pic by a local photographer - yep that says it all. A little feller, standing tall.
https://i.cbc.ca/1.5035136.1551261452!/ ... d-vole.jpg

[maxjohnson]

Squirrels ate my corn stalks, now they come for my sunflowers. Kind of my fault for putting a hanging basket there.

PXL_20230731_202012778.jpg

[MissS]

Somebody is releasing Red Squirrels into the neighborhood. We have never had them and now we have about 8 of them. They are digging in my tomato beds and it won't be long before the fruit is ripe and they start to sample them. My next door neighbor just had his house painted last month and now the squirrels have chewed a hole into the eves and moved into his attic. I feel so bad for him. We have 2 live traps out for them but nobody has gone in.

[JRinPA]

Sounds like somebody needs to be dressed down. Are you part of an HOA? This might actually be a good reason for one.

[MissS]

Sounds like somebody needs to be dressed down. Are you part of an HOA? This might actually be a good reason for one.

Yes we have one but it is not too proactive about anything like this. They wouldn't do anything about the deer in the hood but the three adjacent neighborhoods got together and contacted the DNR to cull the herd some. Of course then our president is taking credit for it when not one deer was culled in our boundary. Squirrels I'm sure will be a few select houses hiring exterminators and trying to trap or shoot them on their own.

[karstopography]

@MissS what are the native squirrels in your area?
https://wisconsinpollinators.com/Articl ... edSquirrel
I was looking at the squirrel possibles for Wisconsin. Red squirrels evidently need interlocking conifer forests to thrive if the link is correct. Link says Red Squirrels are primarily arboreal, whereas the Fox and Gray squirrels are more likely to be found on the ground. It seems so strange someone would capture a number of red squirrels and relocate them to a neighborhood.

[JRinPA]

That sounds backwards to me, red squirrels are more of a ground squirrel here, while grey squirrels are the high flying tree squirrels that make a nest up high. Red squirrels around the house are bound to dig and chew their way into the house.

[MissS]

@MissS what are the native squirrels in your area?
https://wisconsinpollinators.com/Articl ... edSquirrel
I was looking at the squirrel possibles for Wisconsin. Red squirrels evidently need interlocking conifer forests to thrive if the link is correct. Link says Red Squirrels are primarily arboreal, whereas the Fox and Gray squirrels are more likely to be found on the ground. It seems so strange someone would capture a number of red squirrels and relocate them to a neighborhood.

Our local squirrels in this neighborhood are the gray squirrels but there are some Fox squirrels close by. One of my neighbors did see someone with a livetrap releasing a squirrel but did not know what kind it was. My guess is that these were a pest in someone's neighborhood and rather than dispatching them they are relocating them. Now they are a pest here. My new neighbors across the street told me that when they lived across the highway that they would trap things and bring them over here. Well now they have their old friends back. They have a groundhog that they are trying to catch and I told them that it was illegal to release it elsewhere and they got a really sad look on their face. I told them that they do an awful lot of damage and if you released it then you would be giving someone else the problem.

I myself have been known to relocate raccoons to a forest preserve about 30 miles away. I did that just last week. I was hoping to catch a squirrel but got a raccoon instead.