to think the bloody squirrels didn't have to strip ALL the nuts off my tree? Bastards.

[EileenAlanna]

Went out today to find them all gone, nothing but piles of empty shells they'd broken open. I was looking forward to having some. Lovely hazelnuts they were.

It could be worse. My dsis in Canada had raccoons that steal all of her plums from her trees - and they're vicious bastards too!

Our resident squirrels like to taunt DDog by throwing walnuts down out of the tree at her either that or her barking makes them jump and they drop them!

I'll swop you for some rabbits .... now they are real bastards. Amazingly, we have never seen a squirrel here (been here 5 years) even though we have loads of trees including 120 hazel trees. We thought we'd be overrun with them, but have not seen one.

We have a local squirrel too, Dh calls him secret squirrel. He's a fat arse beggar who knows when it's bin day and knows how to open the food bins and have a dig about. He's a grey one and lives in the small wooden area at the bottom of the road by the stream.

*wooded area not wooden.

Mine too! They dump the shells in a pile in one area; at least they are tidy about it (the thieving swines!)

@ginghamstarfish I suspect the bastard squirrels are on MN & Googling the locations of all our trees. Your 120 trees (totally envious might be where we need to make our last stand so their whereabouts must remain secret.
@PolkadotsAndMoonbeams I know the plums are a loss but these are kittens!!!!! Kittens get carte blanche for everything, because reasons.

My friend's garden is surrounded by walnut trees. We can never get hold of a walnut because bastard squirrels get there first.. Not only that but they pick them, chew them, and then spit out the shells etc covering everything below with disgusting debris!

I've been having a look for solutions & found a few good suggestions. As @ginghamstarfish is the only one of us that actually still has any nuts this year the rest of us will just have to remember to remember this next year.
Irish Spring Soap 2 ways of using it it seems. 1 suggests cutting the bars into small cubes, wrapping them in sacking/rags & stapling to stakes around the garden perimeter & trees/plants at risk. The other says grate the soap onto the ground around the areas you're protecting. You'd probably need a few of these multi packs @ginghamstarfish www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Irish-Spring-Deodorant-Soap-bar-original-106-3g-x-12/293179457905

Coffee grounds. Spread them around the plants/trees/perimeter. I don't know if they still do it but one of the big coffee shop chains bag up their grounds & people can just take them. Can't remember which one it was but worth popping in & asking next time you're passing any of them.

Peppermint oil. Dab some on cotton wool balls & place at will.

The common factor is the smell, apparently. It'll repel squirrels & other rodents but not insects & they don't actually harm them. I'm going with belt & braces & using them all next year.

Let them eat the nuts, it's not like they can go down to Lidl's and buy their own is it?

I went to an interesting talk by Michael heseltine about his campaign against grey squirrels. For his birthday, he'd asked for bird boxes to be put in some woodland he owned. Grey squirrels chewed their way into all of them and took the eggs. He now has regular grey squirrel shoots. Not possible for everyone, I know.
If your tree is away from other trees, I.e. squirrels can't jump across, you can put a metal band round the trunk, so they can't climb up.

We have 2 squirrels, they eat our nuts :-( Although at the moment my kids are finding nuts on the floor and cracking them with a stone and squealing with delight when they find something inside. They are the tiniest, softest nuts ever, I have sampled one. I'm guessing the resident squirrel rejected them.
We also have a cherry tree, we managed to eat a handful of almost ripe cherries one day this year. By the next day the birds had had every one, it was cherry stone carnage on the lawn.
The same with the red currents and black current bushes, my dream of making red current jame and homemade Ribeana in tatters.
Thankfully our birds dont seem to like the blackberries as they do get picked by us to make blackberry liqueur.
Just wish there was something that would eat the rhubarb, but the wildlife round here seem to have the same aversion to it that I do.

We used to have some real fat bastard grey squirrels, who were also incredibly stupid and would bury bits of bread and strawberries and other things that would never make it. They'd also eat all the blossom off the fruit trees and all the baby plums - and bury a few of those too, I'm not sure a plum stone although the same size as a nut probably isn't the same.

Now we have a cat who doesn't catch squirrels but acts as a deterrent and this year the garden has bloomed. I have two heaving apple trees, plums galore and had magnolia blossoms for the first time in years.

We don't have nut trees but the bloody squirrels here strip all the pine cones leaving debris all over cars and driveway, they also had all the rubber off the aerial on my old car.
They dig up my bulbs and then bury bloody acorns and conkers all over the garden so I spend the rest of the year pulling up saplings
17 bloody oak saplings in the lawn when I was mowing last week!
The squirrels are out cuted by the hares (who are gorgeous ) so are just a pest in our garden

Squirrel-bastards.

There's a greedy squirrel bastard stripping my hazel trees and wrecking the grass as the daft creature can't work out where to hide the cobs. He's joined in the garden by a pair of seriously obese and seriously randy wood pigeons which seem to spend all day jumping each other...

The joys of nature

Wait until they hibernate and steal them all back.

i'm emigrating to the isle of wight next year, i love the red squirrels. so cute.

Squirrels are violent little bastards too

Yesterday evening when I was cycling, something hit me surprisingly hard in the shoulder

I looked round and it was a bastard squirrel who had chucked a nut right at me

I agree red squirrels are much nicer

They are much smaller - so can't throw so hard ! -

and more timid, so they are always scampering away in a red blur
The greys here have that "C'mon, think you're 'ard" body language

@HandsReachingOut strategy & tactics - I like your thinking. Will you lead us on these guerrilla raids???

Ok I’m with the squirrels, maybe bribed with nuts maybe not. I gave them my iPhone and they have a Facebook group and tracking. They are coming for revenge to your reporting them. Your produce is theirs to snack upon

I have no nut trees. I have to wait until spring when I can traditionally observe my lovingly sourced bulbs sprouting in other neighbours' containers, far and wide, where the stupid, fluffy little bastards have dug them up and re-buried them.

Squirrels do happen to be quite tasty and I have given serious
consideration to growing-my-own in lieu of my plants.

I have evidence of a thieving squirrel bastard leaving the scene after rustling through my fig tree and biting my figs.