Why I hate squirrels

So yeah, this is why I hate squirrels. This is my largest bamboo, by far, and they seem to have quite a taste for the new shoots when they come up. Matter of fact, they will actually climb up a nearby pine tree and then leap over to a 20+ foot tall shoot to chew out the top, killing it. So they leave me no choice but to kill them.

Sorry about the fogged picture at the last half. Had a rain storm come in early morning and it apparently got moisture inside the lens. But I had seen enough. On the morning of 04/21, I was in the blind waiting for this critter. And this morning he apparently brought along a friend. So both of them got a free ticket to Squirrel Heaven.




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-1ZxTopIK8

Rats with a tail perm. They are the crows of the forest and are nothing but trouble.

I have a few orchids in the yard that during this time of the year produce flower stems. This year there seems to be more squirrel activity in the yard and learned that they like to eat the orchid flower stems.
Also I was in the yard yesterday hosing some plants when a squirrel came out of a clump of small palms and ran over my foot. I was able to spray the other one in chase with the hose before he got too me. They seem to be getting bold around my house.

I wish I had your problem! I have bamboo on my property that was here when I got it. Hate it! Don’t know how to kill it or get rid of it! Spreads like cancer. I have several squirrels on my property and they don’t touch it! I hate squirrels for a different reason, they dig holes in my yard!

Dennis Gulla said:

I wish I had your problem! I have bamboo on my property that was here when I got it. Hate it! Don’t know how to kill it or get rid of it! Spreads like cancer. I have several squirrels on my property and they don’t touch it! I hate squirrels for a different reason, they dig holes in my yard!

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Cut down all the culms (shoots) and keep at it every time you see a new shoot come up. Eventually it will die off from lack of photosynthesis. Bamboo can't live on the rhizomes alone.

I recently bought a small trencher so I can cut some trenches and put in 20 inch deep barriers to keep the bamboo from getting into our fruit tree groves. If your bamboo is over in a neighbor's yard, you will need to separate the rhizomes at the property line and find some way to keep the rhizomes from growing back into your yard. Or coordinate it with your neighbor to cut down all the culms everywhere and just keep at it.

Matter of fact I am preparing to cut out a stand of yellow vivax that I put closer to the house than I should have. The culms tend to get real funky looking with dirt and lichens, so it's just not as visually appealing as I thought it would be. New shoots are spectacular looking, but within a couple of years, well, not so much.

The game plan is to cut down all the culms and then allow any new shoots to grow up just to the point where they start to put out leaves. This will cause the rhizomes to expend their resources a whole lot quicker, and hopefully just kill it off completely in a year or two.

I've had the bamboo groves going for almost 25 years, and it is only in the past year or two that it has made itself known getting into places I don't want it going. I didn't want to contain it, because there are more places I don't mind it going than there are places I don't want it.

I took some pics of the trencher I bought and the trench I began digging to separate the bamboo from one of the fruit groves.










And the following pics are after Connie and I put in the 20" tall aluminum flashing barrier.










This was actually more tedious to do than I would have liked. Had the flashing been thicker and more rigid, it would have been much easier to fit it into the trench by pressing it down into the soft soil. But this flashing is pretty thin and although it should block the rhizomes (I have it tilted slightly at an angle so the rhizomes will tend to come up rather than down when they encounter the barrier) it's not something you can just press down on to cut it into the soil. But we got it done. Just enough above the surface where I should be able to see rhizomes crossing over the top. I will likely have to scrape the top of the barrier clear of soil every now and again, however.

I had to join two sections of flashing, and what I did was to bend the mating ends sort of "L" shaped in opposite directions so that short side of the "L" would catch on the other one's short side. Then I bent them together and pressed them tight and put evenly spaced pop rivets into the joint to hold it together. I was afraid that the flashing is so thin that it might buckle over time, allowing gaps that rhizomes could squeeze through. This way, just no way that can happen. Hopefully anyway.

I appreciate the advice! I’m willing to try anything!

Cutting down the culms and keeping them from coming back would be the equivalent of throwing a tarp over top of your grass. Everything underneath it will die off. Plants NEED photosynthesis.

Good luck!

You have no compassion for animals. You don't have to be so selfish. It's just a tiny creature.

Romasia1 said:

You have no compassion for animals. You don't have to be so selfish. It's just a tiny creature.

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I see. And I guess you are going to try to tell me that you have never had reason to kill something?

Romasia1 said:

You have no compassion for animals. You don't have to be so selfish. It's just a tiny creature.

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Many rodents (including squirrels) are highly destructive and are primary and secondary vectors for disease (research crops and related economic loss, bubonic plague, etc).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpLKiiDHktM

Well this year the squirrels decided that our tangerines were pretty tasty and didn't seem very interested in leaving any for us. Not sure if it was just one VERY hungry squirrel or a few of them. They sure seemed to vanish in a hurry, and the trees in that one grove were just about stripped bare of fruit before I set up the hunter's blind and sent one to the happy hunting grounds. Not sure if I got the perpetrator as I saw another one helping itself to one of the other trees after that. When one showed up around the bird feeders around the same time and I made hawk food out of him, I stopped the problem before the Poncan tangerines started to vanish.

Next year I will start earlier keeping an eye on things. Shouldn't be too bad, as it seems between me giving the hawks a taste of squirrel meat and my rifle shooting skills has pretty much wiped the squirrels out around here. Been weeks since I have seen one. I still see at least one hawk stopping by to check for an offering, though.

Oh yeah, the squirrels also stripped our pear trees of fruit this year too. Any of you squirrel huggers out there that want them, come and get them. You are welcome to every last one of them to hug all you want.

Rich Z said:

I took some pics of the trencher I bought and the trench I began digging to separate the bamboo from one of the fruit groves.

And the following pics are after Connie and I put in the 20" tall aluminum flashing barrier.

This was actually more tedious to do than I would have liked. Had the flashing been thicker and more rigid, it would have been much easier to fit it into the trench by pressing it down into the soft soil. But this flashing is pretty thin and although it should block the rhizomes (I have it tilted slightly at an angle so the rhizomes will tend to come up rather than down when they encounter the barrier) it's not something you can just press down on to cut it into the soil. But we got it done. Just enough above the surface where I should be able to see rhizomes crossing over the top. I will likely have to scrape the top of the barrier clear of soil every now and again, however.

I had to join two sections of flashing, and what I did was to bend the mating ends sort of "L" shaped in opposite directions so that short side of the "L" would catch on the other one's short side. Then I bent them together and pressed them tight and put evenly spaced pop rivets into the joint to hold it together. I was afraid that the flashing is so thin that it might buckle over time, allowing gaps that rhizomes could squeeze through. This way, just no way that can happen. Hopefully anyway.

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