The battle begins! My little trouble makers are laying in wait underground and I am armed from above. Armed with Ex-Lax, chocolate flavor of course; Juicy Fruit gum and my new pellet gun! Who are my they you ask? Why the gophers! No they are not the cute cuddly creature from the 80’s movie Caddyshack! Each year it is a battle of the wits.
My first year up here was my eye-opener! I planted a bunch of tomato plants, a couple of zucchini, watermelons, Tuscan cantaloupe, acorn squash, peas, green beans, wax beans, black eyed peas, corn…you name it and it was in my garden.
My vegetables were growing rather nicely, and then I started noticing these strange mounds and trails in my garden. They were starting to look like the popped veins on the back of my hands after a hard day of work. I went down to the garden and smoothed out the soil.
I would come home from work and take a walk through the garden checking each plant to see that it was doing well, and that the fruits of my labor were paying off. Then one day I came home and saw immediately that there was a problem with the green beans. High on the trellis they were but they were all wilted. I went over to see what the issue was. Were they getting water? Yup they were, but there were no stems connecting the roots to the stems! Each plant was sheared, and behind where the row was there was a huge mound.
Can you imagine seeing a beautifully formed acorn squash? The dark green color, the thick stem, and imagining how good it would taste with butter and brown sugar…only to lift it up to harvest and to find that the entire other half of the squash has been eaten through…
That is when I bought the Ex-Lax and Juicy Fruit gum. Each mound that I found in my garden I would open up, only to find the underground tunnels. Into each I placed the Ex-Lax and Juicy Fruit gum then covered it back over. I marked each area with a big rock from my garden. Yes, we grow rocks here too! After a few weeks, I had success! Those trouble makers were gone. No more wilted plants without roots; no more half eaten zucchini; no more stalks of corn sinking, shakily into the ground.
We celebrated on the deck above the garden! What luck! It only took a few weeks! About a month later, again on the deck, heating up the grill to make some great steaks with some grilled zucchini. There in the garden sitting on it’s hindquarters eating a juicy ripe tomato was a ground squirrel!
Life in the Foothills 
Couldn’t you find a way to make the mosquitoes attracted to the squirrels and solve two problems at once?
When I first read that title, I thought that you were referring to *me*.
I could write something on you if that would make you feel better!