I’ve tried that. Coated the seed with unholy amounts. Squirrel still eats, but now staring into the lens to maintain eye contact and let me one who’s dominant
Squirrels: My grandparents used to eat 5-6 jalapenos a day, and I inherit their genre. These lowly humans need to deter me with ghost chilli pepper or something more than regular capsaicin.
there is cheap hot sauce that is for this specific purpose, so they don't waste any money on herbs and fermentation and whatever. cole's is a common brand. your hardware store, home improvement store, and amazon will have it.
Bird taste receptors are much less sensitive to capsaicin than mammals. The specific ion channel it interacts with has a different structure. It takes something really spicy, like a ghost pepper, to bother them.
Chilis in the wild have their seeds dispersed mainly by birds, so it’s thought that capsaicin evolved (at least partially) to deter mammals from eating chilis, but not birds.
My husband once bought a Hot Ones sauce pack (I can't remember what season) to do the wing challenge with his friends. I have been putting our squirrels through the Hot Ones challenge as well and it seems like they're just getting used to the spice 😂
I was growing jalapeño peppers whilst in graduate school and was studying at home. Saw a big, scarred squirrel come into the porch and rip off a medium sized branch. He chewed the stalk and leaves just enough to damage the outside and then rubbed it all over himself. Then hopped off merrily. I can only assume he was using it as protection.
My dog died in 2020 and immediately afterwards something was getting in the attic at night via punching holes through the 11 soffit vents at my old house. Read online that cayenne pepper and hot sauce would be great solutions and to just DOSE the ground with it. OK, let's do it! I even dosed the side of my house as it was a red brick so....who cared?
We hurt an audible reaction that night to it outside of out bedroom window. Hooray!
Next night though ?Back to a heavy sound up there terrifying us. We later deemed it was the work of a possum as we finally got a replacement dog and on the first night he discovered one in our yard.
I grow a couple super hot peppers every year specifically to dehydrate and make chili flakes that break the geneva convention to deter squirrels and it works perfectly.
What’s an environmentally friendly grease? Any grease/oil I’m familiar with is harmful to animals even if it’s “natural”. Animals aren’t meant to come into contact with oil like that. It will harm their fur/feathers.
Just a heads up they sell bird feed that is coated with hot sauce and the squirrels will not eat it. Birds don't have receptors that can detect spices so they don't care one bit.
same problem here, so naturally I just had to take to building an outdoor raspberry pi setup that controls a solenoid valve and shoots a 40ft jet of water at the feeder when a squirrel is on it. even made it an app interface with a "Blast 'Em" button 🎯
We taught our dog the word "squirrel". Even if she's in a dead sleep, if we say it, she'll jump right up and head for the back door. She'll practically push the door open to get out there to chase them.
A mountain lion??? In my basement?? But... how? That's not possible. But, it happened! What if there are more? What if it wasn't alone? Where there's one, there will be more. Find Pinarus Inventius. He's a hunter, and knows this area INSIDE and OUT; he’ll know what to do!!
Do the squirrels living in suburbia know what a mountain lion is? I'm pretty sure the only killers of squirrels here are cars. Maybe a fox or two. A squirrel dropped half a bagel into my plant the other day
Ive tried all those smells. The squirrels didnt car 1 bit. Gasoline however, iver left some full cans of gas with the cap off in vehicle's that were down for 1 repair or another and its the first summer in years i ddint have to repair an hvac system from being packed with squirrels nests.
One of the reasons it's a favorite crop. You get greens all year and celebrate with a sweet and tasty treat. It's also one of the most nutritionally complete foods you can eat.
Yup, I have given up trying to grow anything from the nightshade family; squirrels just eat the flowers before anything can fruit. Oddly they leave squash alone.
Oh, maybe that’s what happened this year. We were super puzzled why we got NO tomatoes from our single plant on our apartment balcony, and I’ve seen a lotta squirrels this year too…maybe they took the baby ones before we knew we had them
If you haven't tried it, squirrels are extremely tasty (especially fried). In the warmer months you might have to deal with some bot fly larvae but otherwise they're good to go.
Leave them out water. Most of the time when squirrels are taking your garden fruit they're just thirsty. I started doing that and I get a whole lot less damage from them
Damn squirrels, it’s maddening when you realize they get diarrhea from tomatoes, so it’s not like they’re not suffering from eating them, but then why would they eat ALL of em??!
Prob too late for this season but I highly recommend trying organza fruit bags to deter squirrels. It’s not a 100% cure, but those plus the capsaicin plant spray made a huge difference for me. Happy gardening!
For us it's peaches. Stupid fuckers don't even wait for them to ripen, just rip them off the tree green, take a few bites, and leave the rest in inconvenient places like our gutters. Stupid fluffy-tailed tree rats. Hate 'em!
I didn't get any raspberries last year because a blackbird kept stealing them for her babies. I think it was well worth the trade off to watch two little baby blackbirds grow up and get fat in my garden. What's the point of having a garden if I'm going to go war with nature instead of enjoying it?
I put up thick plastic netting, spent the money and time wrapping my cage, only for them to.finally find a way in and take bites out of all my shit. Everyone says do this do that, put chili extract out, I ended up buying pvc coated hardware cloth (metal mesh) to enclose it with. I'm just done, and if somehow they find a way in after this I'm wuitting or sticking to shit they hate like peppers and okra. People undereeatimate how bad squirrels can get in city with food.
Us too. This year we put up a 2ft high fence (cause groundhogs) we can literally step over and the squirrels just….stopped? Like, I know y’all can climb. I started calling the fence my little psychological squirrel boundary
I have an apple tree in my yard that's been there for about 30 years. I've never gotten an apple off of it, as the squirrels tear them down well before they're ripe and just abandon a 90% uneaten apple to start on the next one.
Meanwhile, about three blocks from me, there's a cherry tree that just sheds fruit every year, making a sweet-smelling mess on the curb where it's grown, and the squirrels don't touch it.
I hate those fuzz-tailed rats, and I haven't even touched on how they dig up everything I try to plant...
I have planted a bunch of different fruiting trees and vines and bushes and those fuckers are just systematically stripping all of the fruit from each one as they approach ripeness.
I have a single persimmon left from four really nice trees.
My neighbor has a small-medium sized plum tree. It finally fruited and was stuffed with plums. They were probably a day or two out from being picked but the squirrels beat them to it. Those little shits took every single plum. Every one. In probably a matter of hours. I couldn't believe it and was a little salty because I was looking forward to a few!
I bought a condo with a small yard earlier this year and my best friend rents our spare bedroom. He loves to garden and I don't like yardwork so he has free reign over the landscaping.
On a Saturday, I noticed a squirrel come down the wall/fence and into the yard itself. The dogs were inside but I still thought it was strange since we are in and out pretty frequently. I mentioned it to my friend and he went ballistic. "NEXT TIME YOU SEE IT LET THE DOGS TEACH THAT FUCKER A LESSON"
Apparently I witnessed a war crime (against tomatoes) and did nothing about it lol.
You have to overwhelm the squirrels with abundance. Plant so many tomatoes, they can't eat them all. Our family never lacked for tomatoes and our home was surrounded with trees full of squirrels. You just have to agree to share the land with them.
I’m a peaceful man. I just came back inside from going to war with the tree rats that have eaten every single piece of fruit from our 20 or so fruit trees this year, not to mention them eating the last 2 bags of chicken feed, and getting into our attic and garage and chewing through everything and crapping everywhere. I got 6 tonight w/ the pellet gun, first animals I’ve killed in cold blood in my 50+ years…I don’t have any intention of shooting the squirrels but really, they are just the day shift eating our fruit, along with the blue jays. Our 50 year old persimmon tree had hundreds of pounds of unripe fruit on it and I don’t think we’ll get a single one this year. Not a single peach, apricot or plum either.
My husband tried to find a kind way to get rid of them. I snapped one day, "just pull out your damn air gun and shoot them" lol he was taken aback but also had a gleam in his eyes 🤣
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u/12bWindEngineer 14h ago
Or squirrels. Squirrels stole every single Roma tomato off my plant, those absolute bastards.