Bloody squirrels are eating my strawberries!

[RiojaLover75]

I've just come home to find that my new strawberry planter has been ransacked! It's got to be squirrels as there are SOOOO many of them being as our garden is surrounded by lots of large trees and they often visit the garden.

They've eaten the ripe ones and even had a few nibbles out of the unripe ones!

Has anyone faced this problem before? And how did you get round it? Do you think my other tomato, lettuce and radish plants will suffer the same fate??

Help!!!!!!!

Shot gun

Believe me if I had one I would!!!! I'm SOOOOOO [ANGRY]

I've spent weeks growing seeds and buying baby plants

Fecking squirrels!!!!

Get a trap - once you have captured it, it is illegal to then release it into the wild - you have to kill it (unless you have a specific license to be able to release them).

In seriousness, they do cause serious problems - to the bird population (eating the eggs), trees and not forgetting the red squirrel. I am sure I will get slaughtered for saying that, but you have to be realistic - they are not part of the natural habitat, and all the experts agree they need controlling ! ( Oh apart from the RSPCA, but lets not get started on them !)

I'll lend you my dog ..one of his favourite pastimes is chasing squirrels out of my garden

Oh mine to! I had am almost ripe on on thr plant yesterday, was going to be our first, but was gone this morning DC were very sad. I have made a 'cage' around the pit with chicken wire, so hopefully we will have another few in a couple of days.

FWIW, the squirrels also ate all my pea and bean seedlings, so I raised another set in little green house thing, then planted them out once 10cm ish, and they were left alone.

My radishes, lettuce, tomatoes, courgette have been ok so far.

er, I mean a cage around the pot

GivePeas, I'm shocked but pleasantly pleased that we're able to get rid of them legally!!

Just seen this www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/10/02/easquir202.xml

Not sure that hubby will be pleased about this, he'll deter me from considering killing the little buggers.

last year squirrels ate our tomatoes, plus wrecked the sunflowers. then dug up all the winter bulbs. They are very popular round here!

Apostrophe, I thought there were quite a few more nearly ripe ones on the plants too and sure enough when I looked closely they've been bitten off too!!! They'd better not go for my peas, they're still only little about 3cm above ground.

Arggggghhhh!!!! Bloody things.

The Environment Department says that squirrels can be killed humanely by shooting them in a cage or luring them into a sack and administering no more than two firm blows to the head with a hammer or something similar, a technique known as "cranial despatch". Drowning, gassing or killing by any other means is banned under the Wild Mammals (Protection) Act 1996.

Dead squirrels can be buried, incinerated or put in a plastic bag for the refuse collection.

Ewww!!!

But remember - they just ate your strawberries !!

sQUIRRELS ARE JUST GORGEOUS! i'D BE HAPPy to encourage them into the garden and admire them instead!

Scuse caps

rats with furry tails! That how someone once described squirrels to me!