Squirrels and Chipmonks

Have been eating the cherries off my cherry trees, leaving me the stem with a pit hanging from it. Does anyone have a remedy for stopping them? They can get to my tree from running along the top of my wall so a tin thing on the tree trunk will not solve my problem.

PAJA,
Rat poison springs to mind.

Best;
blue

How about netting? I remember my grandma always putting up netting to keep birds out of her blueberries, I would think you could do the same thing here, at least on the lower branches that you can reach (and that's where you'd be wanting to pick cherries from anyway). Or I wonder if you could rig up something like the motion controlled sprinklers that you can get to keep deer and stuff out of your garden, would just have to make sure it was pointed high enough that it'll get them if they're on the wall.

I did put netting on them this year, but it blew off. I need to get a better kind of netting. I wondered if those chile sprays work . Anyone ever try it?

Ouch, rat poison... not a good idea. A poisoned squirrel or chipmunk could easily end up in the food chain and would ultimately kill what ever ate it!

Try the fruit tree netting again. It's so much fun watching them hang on the outside of the netting until they fall to the ground.

Yes, I gave up rat poisoning because I am afraid the neighborhood dogs might try to eat the dead squirrel or chipmunk. I will try getting the square netting rather than the row type neting I have been trying to use. But they are sneaky. We never see a squirrel or chipmunk in our try -- I guess they attack at night.

See if you can attract a couple hawks to nest in your neighborhood. You would not believe how quickly the abundance of squirrels around my house vanishd after they moved in earlier this year. Last year I was trapping them at home and releasing squirrels at my work. I caught 8 and still had them all over thanks to all the contruction going on around here. Now I see maybe 1 over at the neighbors. Much nicer having them thinned out by nature, the fluffy tailed rats chewed holes in my screens and girdled a couple small tree's trying to find food.

KWET,
WHY in the WORLD would you RELEASE them?? You need to be like Little Bunny Fruu Fruu, walking in the forest, picking up the squirrels and boppin' them on the head.

Best;
blue

I would be very pleased to have hawks or owls, but I am not sure how easy it is to get them to come into town. We do live close to a forested area, but the hawks and owls seem to stay out of town.
I have a farm in Mississippi where some lovely owls reside, or did until Katrina. But it is heavily forested and out in the middle of nowhere. I enjoy watching the great horned who had claimed my yard, sitting on a beam that used to hold a swing and fluttering down for a bite to eat every now and then.
We have lots of coyotes in the area, but somehow, they aren't keeping up with the squirrels and chipmunks. They do howl a lot though.

Are you sure it's squirrels and chipmunks eating your cherries and not birds? When you mentioned that you hadn't ever caught them in the act it made me think that they may not be the guilty parties after all. Especially the part about the pits left hanging from the tree--I would think a squirrel would pull the whole thing off and gnaw around the pit, then you would have pits all over the ground, vs birds would sit in the tree and peck off all the good stuff leaving the pit hanging. Either way, netting should hopefully do the trick. But if it's birds, there are a couple tricks I've seen our local grape growers use to keep the birds out...fake owls stuck up near the vines and shiny sparkly things that blow in the wind and scare the birds off (although I tried tying pieces of tinfoil to my grapevine last summer and they still got all of them before I did!)

No, I am not sure it is not birds. I have not seen anything going after my cherries. We have lots of birds and squirrels and chipmunks, but I haven't seen anything eating my cherries. As far as I know it could be an elephant of a giraffe, but those aren't common around here.
I always assumed birds would leave little holes, not pits hanging on stems. I gather you have experience otherwise? I am certainly willing to buy a plastic owl or even put up shiny things. I will definitely put up a netting in the future.
I have heard a lot about birds stealing cherries, but I thought the just took a couple of pecks, not the whole cherry minus the pits!

Maybe a shiny pinwheel might scare birds?

And we have woods in our backyard but live in "city limits" otherwise, and we still have quite a healthy population of hawks and owls (barred and great horned) in the neighborhood. Both are very adaptable to urban type environments though they might not like active construction going on. Ours is a pretty old neighborhood with old growth trees.

The hawks aren't picky though - they'll nab a bird or two as well as the squirrels, but as kwetz said, the squirrel populatioin has gone to much more manageable levels with them around.

Based on what the birds did to my grapes I'm sure they could eat the cherry with no problem! And I don't think they'd have the capability to get the whole cherry off the tree, but would just pick the good stuff from around the pit. That's why I think it might be birds rather than a larger animal that would take the whole cherry off and probably drop the pit on the ground.

I live in a new neighborhood, but we do have lovely trees, but they just don't provide the dense leafy cover that you southerners get. Ours are tall pines and scrub oak and other bushes. My neighbors told me that some owls used to live in my large ponderosa pines before my house was built, but they haven't seen them in a long time. I have never seen them. To make matters worse we are in the middle of a long term and nasty drought which is killing off our native trees. The fewer trees, the fewer hawks and owls. I am praying, literally, for a substantial period of rain. I can only water so much. I wouldn't mind a few pinwheels, though. I might enjoy them.

ecrane,
You may be right about it being birds. I will order bird netting this year for use next year. Whatever is ruining the cherries wasn't here last year or I would already have netting. I have to say, though, that the trees which have not been cleaned by deer are looking very healthy!