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sp the local squirrels like my opuntia,and not just the prickly pear but all of them.even the the ones with killer spines,the squirrels dont seem to mind and always get a bite in.Does anyone have any advice on how i can get rid of them,now i live near the hills so i cant really do much ,but as far as protecting my cactus from further destruction any help would be great.

i can pick them off with a pellet gun but i love animals too!!!!

i can pick them off with a pellet gun but i love animals too!!!!

If ya lived closer ya could borrow my cat, he dearly loves squirrels Seroiusly though, I've yet to have any type of animal mess with my pricklypear.
I'm also a animal lover but if I had to choose between my cacti and a squirrel Yup, the rat with a fuzzy tail is going down.

Bill

theres just to many of this little suckers that it would be a waist of time getting them with a pellet gun.what i need is some sort of repelent.

Are you certain it is squirrels doing the munching and not snails and slugs? I am plauged with snails this year. They are chowing down on flowers, buds, seed pods, stems, you name it! Even plants they ordinarally leave alone such as M. geometrizans.

This is not to say you don't know what you're saying, but just in case.

It is squirrels.i've seen the litle guys scramble every time i walk up to my garden.complete chunks of cacti are missing.there are holes in the the ground.I had the same problem last year.I planted large pads of opuntis indica and within days trhey were completly gone.Now it is only the opuntias that are eaten.i have many other cacti in my garden but have had no problems with them.

I also have a vegetable garden and h had to make a fence of chicken wire to keep the critters out.they ate my melon and squash plants.
i thought of using the chicken wire method but some of the cacti are to big.poison is another option but i have dogs

daiv wrote:Are you certain it is squirrels doing the munching and not snails and slugs? I am plauged with snails this year. They are chowing down on flowers, buds, seed pods, stems, you name it! Even plants they ordinarally leave alone such as M. geometrizans.

This is not to say you don't know what you're saying, but just in case.

Hey Daiv,
I had a problem with slugs and solved it with some copper flashing.
It sends an electrical charge through the slug or snail and they turn back.
You could either put a ring of it around each plant or a whole bed,but the whole bed thing would meen you would have to go out at night with a flashlight and chuck them out until the area within the flashing is free of them.Or you could just use poison,but in my case I cant because of a small child and pets.

bluedrinks wrote:sp the local squirrels like my opuntia,and not just the prickly pear but all of them.even the the ones with killer spines,the squirrels dont seem to mind and always get a bite in.Does anyone have any advice on how i can get rid of them,now i live near the hills so i cant really do much ,but as far as protecting my cactus from further destruction any help would be great.

i can pick them off with a pellet gun but i love animals too!!!!

My father used to use manure from the zoo to keep deer and rabbits out of his garden beds, dont know if it would work on (tree rats)
Dad said the predator dung in the mix would keep the pests away go figure it seemed to work

Hmm. Squirels it is, then. I suppose the neighbors cat is a built in defense for me against such threats. I need to find a cat that likes to eat snails and slugs!

Daiv

Blue,

We have a lot of problems with rabbits in the spring. We just brush our dog the garden and the smell of the fur repels the silly rabbits. Perhaps that would help with the squirrels, although squirrels seem a little sneakier. Along the same idea, perhaps an owl decoy would repel the varmints. That sometimes works with pigeons and since sqirrel makes good owl food, maybe they are scared of owls too.

My brother had sqirrel problems so he started shooting them with a light bb gun. They got so they would munch until they heard the bb's slide in the gun when he picked it up and then vamvoos.

Good luck on saving your cati.

Mark