Squirrel Advice.

[Wingedharpy]

Need your collective wisdom please.

There is a narrowish strip of earth (approx 9 inches) between the dege of my garden path and neighbour's fence.

Garden is long and narrow - approx. 126 feet.

Strip is not exact same width for full length.

Landscaper filled in the strip with gravel chips and we top dressed chips with small cobbles (bit bigger than a hen's egg).

All looked lovely until......squirrels have now practically stripped the full length of path of the cobbles.

They bury them in the lawn and sometimes just skip off with them taking them to God knows where.

Anyone cast any light on why they do this, how can I stop it and, if not, any other recommendations for filling in this narrow strip with material that will be of no interest to squirrels.

Thank you.

Anyone cast any light on why they do this
Presumably they think they are bumper-sized nuts!
I can imagine that you could put down something that they won't collect as nuts. But they will probably just bury nuts there instead.
Squirrels are a pain in the proverbial.

I have lots of squirrels visiting my garden. They come to steal, amongst other things, bulbs. So I imagine they think your cobbles are fat bulbs and they bury them so as to have them in their larder.

I've got an area of smaller gravel which they've never bothered, and another area topped with bark which they just run over too.

Why did you not just leave the gravel - aesthetics, or did it get everywhere?

I shoot squirrels. They seem to be territorial - get rid of one or two and you don't see another for months.
However I live in the middle of nowhere - I suppose if you are in town your neighbours might not be too keen on you letting off an air rifle in their vicinity.

Yes, they must think they're hard nuts or bulbs. We've got a neighbour who sometimes puts whole fatballs out on her lawn for the birds, I've seen squirrels carrying them off and found a few buried in my containers or lawn... yuk.

So you probably need to use larger cobbles that are too heavy for squirrels to move.

I did leave the gravel in place @TheSpottedZebra and just top dressed with the cobbles as, yes, it looked better and as the cobbles were larger, leaves didn't get trapped in them as much as the gravel bits.

I will look at larger cobbles to see if that would work (if I can lift them).

Tempting though it is, a shotgun wouldn't go down too well in these parts.

Thank you.

There must be a size somewhere between the load carrying capacity of a squirrel and a human! Hens' egg size sounds like it'd be near their upper limit, they're not that big under the fluff (though of course very muscular)... I wonder if they're rolling them?

You could try diluted peppermint or garlic puree. Water it along the bed and over the stones. I hear tell that they don't like the strong smell.

Or maybe a good sprinkling of chilli - some people put it on peanuts to deter squirrels, birds can't detect it apparently.