Snakes Don’t Even Faze Marauding Vagabonds
A friend was visiting the other day, and as we chatted in the front garden, he happened to glance toward my oakleaf hydrangea. Nearby, under the spider azalea, he noticed something coiled on the ground.
“Is that a snake?” he asked.
Yes, it is, I told him. A fake snake. For the squirrels. I explained that several people had told me it would scare away the pests.
My friend, who, like many of us, watches with disgust as the rodents root around his yard, smiled at my snake ploy and told me he takes another tack: “I have a hit man,” he said, going on to explain that the shooter gets to keep and eat whatever he kills.
Welcome to the never-ending squirrel war. It is a struggle to prevent these bushy-tailed rats from digging out tender new plantings, pockmarking every inch of ground and biting off tender shoots - a struggle that requires constant vigilance and ingenuity. It is also a struggle no gardener I know has ever won. But, each in our own way, we keep trying. Not every gardener resorts to shooting down squirrels (or having them shot) like the dirty dogs they are, but many think about it.
True, some haven’t seen the light. Dee Dyess, a tenderhearted friend who lives in nearby Stone Mountain, Ga., coddles the critters. She even had three little wooden houses built for squirrels, complete with shingle roofs that cover them and their feeding dishes. Yes, Dee says, taunting me, “I feed those babies.”
Dee. Dee. Please snap out of it. Squirrels are not cute, harmless, bushy-tailed babies. They are marauding vagabonds, bad for life. I’ve seen a whole lot of squirrels with as much gray hair as I have dragging their tails into my garden to do wrong. They bite tomatoes, decapitate pansies, unearth okra seeds and topple pepper seedlings. They are evil to the bone. As I write, I’m looking at a couple of aging rodents creeping along the high branches of my tulip tree. Now, they’re scampering down the trunk. I know where they’re headed: toward the little patch of thyme I recently planted.
Maddening scenes like this drove me to the fake snakes.
Hearing they worked, I set off in search of the most realistic ones I could find. At the first store’s toy department, I found no snakes at all. Only a few lizards, about a foot long. I snatched them up and resumed my snake hunt.
After futile trips to several more toy departments at stores we once called “five-and-dimes,” I wound up at a shop that sells costumes and gag items. Hooray; they had snakes, too. I picked out a bagful, but not before the salesman treated me to the sight of a fake runny nose and several exciting tales of whoopee cushions, fake vomit and such.
What about these snakes, I asked. Do they really work? Sure do, another store person said, reporting that strategically placed rubber snakes had scared the little darlings right off the roof, across which they used to dash like crazy. As intriguing as fake snakes on the roof were, I resisted more chat and headed home to place mine on the ground - around the bonsai, near the newly planted Corsican mint, amid the still-struggling dwarf mondo, coiled around the rosemary that mysteriously heaves itself almost out of the ground several times a year, leaving it vulnerable to squirrels delighted to finish the job.
Well, I wish I could report that the snakes work. I can’t. Squirrels dig right around them, tossing them aside like so much dirt. The rubber lizards work no better; they’re just too heavy to toss.
I think I figured out the problem. These are city squirrels. Never having seen snakes, they have no reason to fear them. I bet a bunch of big fat stuffed cats’ll do the job.