Image of Design Plan™️ Courtesy of Mr. Wile E. Coyote ESQ. Subcontractor for ACME INC.
Posted on 09/16/2018 10:36:21 AM PDT by Olog-hai
There’s a bumper crop of squirrels in New England, and the frenetic critters are frustrating farmers by chomping their way through apple orchards, pumpkin patches and corn fields.
The varmints are fattening themselves for winter while destroying the crops with bite marks.
Robert Randall, who has a 60-acre orchard in Standish, Maine, said he’s never seen anything like it.
“They’re eating the pumpkins. They’re eating the apples. They’re raising some hell this year. It’s the worst I’ve ever seen,” he said.
Evidence of the squirrel population explosion is plain to see along New England’s highways, where the critters are becoming roadkill.
Last year, there was a bumper crop of acorns and other food that contributed to a larger-than-normal squirrel population this summer across the region, said Rob Calvert, wildlife biologist from the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department.
This summer, there’s not as much food, so the squirrels are looking for nutrition wherever they can find it, including farms, Calvert said. …
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
They need Bobcats, Owls and Coyotes.
Stat.
That’s the way to kill all the raptors and other squirrel predators in half the county.
And damn irresponsible eradication.
“The only thing I could do was to use a pellet rifle.”
You should be able to take a dozen a day with a good pellet rifle or .22.
The squirrels are preparing for global warming...or global cooling...
At one time The Farmer’s Almanac looked at how bushy squirrel tails were as one predictive element in forecasting the severity of the coming winter.
Image of Design Plan™️ Courtesy of Mr. Wile E. Coyote ESQ. Subcontractor for ACME INC.
My brother built a rat killing bucket. It’s on line. A neighbor told him anti-freeze as the liquid is better as it won’t freeze out in the shed during winter. Dowel at the top of the bucket with peanut butter smeared on. Ramp up to the top of the bucket. Rat takes a leap to the peanut butter, dowel spins and rat falls to bottom of bucket and can’t get out.
Out in the woods though I imagine all sorts of other good critters might get trapped though.
We spotted a fox in the neighborhood this summer. That explains the lack of squirrels in thee garden here in southern Connecticut.
Squirrels are rats with bushy tails.
Nearly every day for the past month, our wild cat has brought home (and eaten) either a mouse, chipmunk or red squirrel. Whoever kicked him out of their car and dropped him in our woods - Thank You! We love the guy.
A nearby feral cat colony has left us several dead squirrels on our driveway. Their way of thanking me for the kibble!
Maybe we could discretely spread peanut butter on their shoes and hats...
“Evidence of the squirrel population explosion is plain to see along New England’s highways, where the critters are becoming roadkill.”
First, one ought to correct the end of the sentence to:
” . . . where the critters have always been roadkill.”
Second, I’m not going to click through and follow up on the AP’s anecdotal and cherry-picked data, if data even exists; but I will assert, from my acquaintance with squirrels, that any study that pretends to establish the number of squirrels year-versus-year or decade-versis-decade in New England — all of New England! — with less than a margin of error of 100 to 1,000 percent is absolute horse dung and is scientific malpractice.
No observer on the ground — no number of observers on the ground — no array of satellites — no network of trail cameras — no regiment of scat-counters — no army of canopy watchers — could accurately tally the number of squirrels who pass through even a three-acre scrap of forest in a given day. Period. Very much less could anyone claim to calculate the number of squirrels in the six states of New England.
Or are they using a “computer model”? You know; one that has an algorithm that depresses previous year’s numbers, but adds added weight to current year’s numbers, and assumes they are even being under-representative, so bends the curve upwards. (Like a hockey stick, but hiding the trick this time.)
It seemed like squirrels went away for a few years and were replaced by chipmunks. Now they’re back and of course the chipmunks are still here. There was also one year when a black squirrel showed up and the next year there were more of them. Also, rabbits seem to be reclaiming suburbia over the last few years. Never saw one here before that.
Fortunately, everything was covered. The electric company replaced everything needed to get me up and running again. They even hauled away what was left of the squirrel. These creatures are nuts!
A shortage of Pine Martins.
.
Trump’s fault!
.
I got to make one of those. We’ve got 1 sneaky little bastard that knows about Glue Boards. It must wear little Jet Boots because the tracks in the flour stop and restart on the other side of The Glue Board Sector and nothing on the Sector...
Thank You for the info.
DIE RODENTS ! DIE RODENTS ! DIE RODENTS !
Here in the mid-atlantic I’ve noticed a bumper crop of Deer... and a huge rise in the number of deer killed by automobiles, which has also produced an unusual high number of vultures on standby, sitting, perched on the arms of the overhead lights as you enter the freeway...
And by extension, our fault for voting for him and bringing this squirrel plague on New England!
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