Berry thieving vermin

I'm not one of those people who considers squirrels a nuisance. This is probably a good thing, since the old guy across the street takes great care to provide for them. He has feeding platforms in his trees, has made and erected several other types of feeders, and is out there filling them with corn and peanuts pretty much every morning. He even has one of those big yellow faux street signs in his yard that says "Squirrel X-ing".

I used to have a bird feeder just outside my front window too. I didn't try to prevent the squirrels from getting to the sunflower seeds; I just watched, was entertained, and filled the feeder frequently. One year I even had a pair of regulars that I called Ray and Pete. (Yes, I could tell them apart, and yes, once when Pete was hanging upside down from the feeder with his underside facing me, I could tell that he was a Pete and not, let's say, a Paula. I'm not so sure about Ray.)

Like I said, I'm no enemy of the squirrel. Until, that is, it comes to strawberries. I have about 15 strawberry plants in my back yard. Most are new this year and I don't really know what to expect from them. In the last few years I have come to expect very little from the existing plants. This year I boosted some of the old plants with compost, and that has brought them back to life and into production. But I am not the only one who has noticed. I go out to tend my plants every couple days, and have been mildly annoyed to sometimes find the planters disturbed - litlte holes or mounds in the dirt, the plants kind of pushed over. The occasional empty peanut shell next to a little hole is a whodunnit giveaway.

Since the compost has brought some of the plants back to life, I've been watching little fruits emerge, grow, and turn red. The first berry of the season ripened all by itself, just one lone berry, and I watched it for days as it got bigger and redder. I got to eat that first one - my garden, my berry. It was fabulous, but left me wanting more, of course. The next berry to ripen also came in all by its lonesome, but I thought I'd be generous and let Bill have it. Again I watched it ripen for days. When it had reached perfection just the other night, I told Bill he really needed to go eat that berry, but he didn't. When he went out the next day to get it, he came in with this perfect red berry in his hand, with a quarter of it chewed away by little rodent teeth. Squirrels! In years past I do remember watching and a waiting for a few tiny fruits to turn red, only to have them disappear in the night just before I was going to pick them. This year it seems more maddening because the plants are doing so much better and are producing larger fruit. And because I've been watching them so carefully and so expectantly. Damn the little vermin! If they start eating the blueberries we're going to have serious problems.