The War Against the Squirrels

My wife has been fighting the most wily and dangerous enemy of her gardening career.  She woke up with a cold on Monday morning, feeling sick and coughing. But that was a minor nuisance compared to the calamity that struck later in the day.  The squirrels had gotten into her raised bed and destroyed much of it, including most of the recently planted seeds and some of the younger plants. Kristin had been using Cayenne pepper flakes to keep the squirrels out, but apparently one of them has developed a taste for it.  She threw the closest thing at hand at it (my cell phone charger) when she saw it in her garden, but by then the damage had been done.

Since then, she and the squirrels have been dueling.  She’s been trying something different every day, inspired by the dark secrets found in the murky depths of the Internet, or possibly just in her cold-drug-addled brain.  She’s tried throwing rocks, she’s tried shooting foam discs, she’s tried garlic and chicken wire and most recently, ghosts.

She’s determined to drive the squirrels away, though I worry that she’ll make them so accustomed to the spicy, garlicky food and spooky ambiance that they’ll never eat at a bland, regular garden again.