Home grown tomatoes, home grown tomatoes. What would life be without home grown tomatoes? Only two things that money can't buy — that's true love and home grown tomatoes. — Guy Clark
Just in case you’re concerned about the squirrels on my block going hungry for lack of foodstuff this summer, I’d like to report there’s no cause for worry.
No, I’m not insinuating that I live in a neighborhood full of nuts (colorful, peculiar and eccentric people maybe, but not nuts). I’m saying that the squirrels are getting by just fine eating tomatoes out of our gardens.
I found out when my across-the-alley-neighbor, Gloria Oertle, informed my wife last week that she’d seen the bushy tailed bandits stealing and eating green tomatoes from both our patches. Told Linda she’d dusted her plants and surrounding soil with red pepper to discourage them.
Now it’s one thing for the pesky rodents to chew holes in my bird feeder — or build nests in my attic, but it’s quite another to steal my home grown tomatoes! For, as songwriter Guy Clark puts it, “There ain't nothin' in the world that I like better / Than bacon 'n lettuce 'n home grown tomatoes. / Up in the morning, out in the garden / Get you a ripe one, don't pick a hard 'un. / Plant 'em in the spring, eat 'em in the summer. / All winter without 'em is a culinary bummer. / I forget all about the sweatin' and the diggin' / Every time I go out and pick me a big 'un.”
I Googled the subject of tomato stealing squirrels on the Internet and came up with a variety of options. They included, among other things, giving them something better to eat (peanuts and sunflower seeds were suggested); spraying the plants with an aversive mixture of some sort (such as red pepper flakes mixed with cheap tequila that has been allowed to sit over night); and employing the final solution (a .22 caliber rifle).
I’m not sure about the peanuts and sunflower seeds thing. Sounds to me like it might be a culinary scheme thought up by middle-aged squirrels. Next thing they’ll want is chips, dip, and a chest of cold beer.
As for the red pepper and cheap tequila mixture, I’m guessing that one was thought up by some twenty-something squirrels. No way I’m falling for that one. Besides, who knows what kind of trouble could be caused by a bunch of young rodents jacked up on booze and hot peppers!
Nope. I’ve decided to use moth balls. Don’t laugh. They worked on the honey bees that were trying to retake the second story eaves and wall of my house this year. (You may remember, from past columns, this has gotten to be a ritual much like the swallows ‘miracle’ return to Capistrano on the same day every year. Only, rather than a blessed miracle, the return of bees is experienced as a homeowner’s curse.)
The bees showed up right on time this year — a week before my birthday. The first sign is the sound, amplified by the glass when caught between the inside window and the storm, of ten or fifteen bees frantically trying to escape. (It’s not unlike the swarming sound of the vuvuzela horn blown by fans at the recent soccer matches in South Africa.)
In any event, it’s become a call to arms. Grab the drill, the ladder, the insecticide, the caulk, and go to war.
I phoned several area bee keepers to see if they wanted to harvest the little buggers, but, as in year’s past, I couldn’t find one willing to climb 30 feet up a ladder to talk a swarm of bees into relocating. “Darlin’,” I said to my wife, “gimme me a kiss. I’m a goin’ off to kill them thar bees.” (An Ozark, backwoods speech pattern works best with getting rid of pests around the yard.)
So I climbed, drilled, sprayed, and caulked. But still the honey bees came, seeking a way into their old digs.
At which point I discovered, in another Internet search, that they don’t like moth crystals. So I drilled and filled holes in the eaves with them, and hung old socks full of them on the outside. Haven’t seen a bee since.
When my wife saw me filling old sweat socks with moth balls on the back steps she said, “Honey, I thought you got rid of the bees last month.”
“Naw. It’s not them thar bees. It’s squirrels. They ain’t too flush on thar manners, darlin’. They’re a stealin’ ma tomaters. So I’m a gonna’ give em a good dose a moth balls.”
“Humm. I guess it’s worth a try. If that doesn’t work are you going to try red pepper like Gloria did?”
“Naw. I figure I might as well save that thar pepper fur granny’s recipe.”
“Recipe?”
“Squirrel stew.”
J.T. Knoll is a writer, speaker and prevention and wellness coordinator at Pittsburg State University. He also operates Knoll Training, Consulting & Counseling Services in Pittsburg. He can be reached at 231-0499 or jtknoll@swbell.net
PITTSBURG —
