Critter control, from 'gentle' to 'extreme'

For many gardeners and bird lovers, squirrels provide a serious test for that whole "Minnesota Nice" thing.

So when we asked readers how they dealt with uninvited critters, we shouldn't have been surprised that many choose not to follow the live-and-let-live credo.

Many annoyed green thumbs eventually call a private company such as Critter Control or Minnesota Nuisance Wildlife Control. But most of us first try to take matters into our own hands (I'm a slingshot guy myself), ideally after checking with local officials. (Wildlife ordinances vary, well, wildly. Read more about that on page E2.)

Among our respondents -- many of whom recounted such genteel approaches as setting up squirrel feeders and building cages (for the crops, not the critters) -- Jerry Fischer of Plymouth stood out.

People with 6-foot blow-dart guns from Borneo tend to do that.

In all fairness to Fischer, he doesn't put poison in the darts. His goal is to scare off the red squirrels rather than kill them.

Here's a look at some of the methods practiced locally:

GENTLE William E. Klein, Stillwater: "For low-slung crops such as spinach, peppers, beets, etc., a cage is the best critter control. Made with PVC, chicken wire, zip strips. It costs about $7 in materials but is time-consuming to build. Advantages: easy to move and replace for weeding/harvesting, very lightweight, lasts forever."

Debbie Anderson, Brooklyn Park: "Bunnies are driving me nuts. They like to eat the black vinyl coating off my new chain-link fence. I set a live trap last year and got about six or seven. Then I drive over to the golf course about 3 miles away & let them go. My conscience is at peace."

Gina Herring, Minneapolis: "If there are trees in your area, you WILL have squirrels. To keep them from digging I have found that using pea gravel as a mulch is most effective in the flower garden. In the vegetable garden I lay a cover of plastic netting with fairly large (1- to 2-inch square) holes."

Katrina Hase, White Bear Township: "My husband made a 4-foot-square ground feeder with a screen bottom that's suspended 1 inch off the ground. We fill it with cheap bulk birdseed (black sunflower and millet mix) and bulk feed corn. The squirrels come, but also the blue jays, grackles, brown-headed cowbirds, red-winged blackbirds and even the cardinals. We keep only safflower in the hanging bird feeder, attracting songbirds. The squirrels never touch the hanging feeder anymore."

Richard Lyon, Red Wing: "Actually, we love our squirrels. They each have their own personality, so we give them names -- Ditto, Rafter, Crazy Ludwig, Twofer, Siegfried & Roy, Napoleon Solo, Pencil Tail, Stubs, Lefty.

"[My wife] Bunny can actually 'speak' their language. When they 'bark,' Bunny can bark back at them, and there seems to be some confusion in the squirrel community as to who just said what. Gets quiet for a while until they sort it out."

EXTREME Jerry Fischer, Plymouth: "I had so many red squirrels out here it was unbelievable. I have guns and bows and arrows, but you can't do that around here.

"I used to go out on expeditions with Penan natives in Borneo, and they carry these enormous blowguns made out of ironwood [a local tree]. They take a sapling about an inch and a half in diameter, and they can bore a hole so straight it's like polished in there.

"I started buying baskets and carvings from them and finally asked 'When will I be able to get a blowgun?' They said, 'You know, we don't really make these for tourists.' But I found someone to make one for me.

"The dart is made out of bamboo and maybe a foot long. So you lick the end a little bit and put it in. You put your mouth on the end like you're gonna blow a trumpet, fill your lungs and, like, POOM. Vertically you can shoot it over trees. Horizontally it will go 40, 50 feet.

"You could kill them, you absolutely could. In a tree, almost all the time it enters their rear leg, and they actually just pull it out and run away [laughs]. But they never came back, so they probably got the message."

Elizabeth Drumheller, Minneapolis: "My mom is so sick of the squirrels climbing on her window screens and chasing after my daughter and digging up plants and breaking outside decor that she mixes a bowl of rat poison and peanut butter and they eat it up like it was a treat."

George Ritzinger, Eden Prairie and Grand Rapids: "I keep a BB gun handy to keep them worried."

John Mianowski, Grand Marais: "I stapled two loops of medium-gauge, single-strand copper wire around the bird feeder's perch. Each wire was connected to a power cord, which was plugged into the (switchable) porch light socket.

"Finally I caught a squirrel, with his little pink squirrel butt comfortably resting on the wire, chowing away, so I hit the switch. He let out a yell, the likes of which I couldn't have imagined, and went flying across the back yard. Unfortunately, it seems that squirrel memories are short -- on the order of a couple of days, at most.

"Eventually, I reached an informal truce: I put up a dedicated squirrel feeder. After that, they mostly stayed where they belonged, as long as I kept 'their' feeder stocked. But every now and then one would visit the 'electric' feeder, maybe just to show me that they could, anytime they wanted to."

Bill Ward • 612-673-7643