ME:1 SQUIRREL:0

I had not realized until now how persistent squirrels can be. They are such determined little things and taken upon themselves the mission of searching and destroying the bulbs. Did I know that before planting my bulbs? Yes and no… I’ve heard that they would dig up and eat the bulbs but I had severely underestimated what lengths they would go to to do so. Within a few hours of finishing planting, they had covertly come out to investigate what I had done. I thought I did my best to cover my tracks but I guess it was not enough to deceive them. They had taken a few bulbs but thankfully most were still buried in place but I knew had to find a deterrent before they devastated my entire crop.

My husband had read somewhere that sprinkling cayenne pepper would help but we didn’t have enough in the pantry so that idea was quickly abandoned. I searched the internet for solutions but most were too tedious for me like the one where you had to put chicken wire on the ground. First of all, I would have to go buy the wire, then find something to hold it down, then figure out how to position it around my existing plants in the bed. Remember, I had decided to go down the bulb route for convince not added work!!

As I took on the scarecrow role in the garden, I got to thinking, what if I used my cat’s litter as mulch? The smell of cat urine would act like a repellent. LIGHT BULB! [Side note: I’ve switched my cat over to using pine pellets as litter and they are totally biodegradable and environmentally friendly but hopefully not squirrel friendly.]

The next day, I was able to by chance witness the effectiveness of my solution: the squirrel came over to check out the garden bed and all it took was two sniffs before he hopped off in search of something else that smelled better. HURRAY, [ME : 1 SQURRREL : 0]!!