Almost every morning I take a little walk out to the backyard to see how everything is getting along and if any plants look like they could use another drink of water before the heat of the day sets in. One morning a few weeks ago I found a strawberry on the dirt, out of the raised garden bed, just laying there by its lonesome self with a little tiny bite taken out of it. At the time I didn't see this as a bad thing. I figured that since whatever it was that only tasted the strawberry (instead of eating the whole thing and leaving no evidence) that I didn't have anything to worry about. I actually thought it was a good thing that whatever tried it, didn't eat the whole thing so he/she must not have liked it very much.
I was wrong. I had underestimated the taste buds and sneakiness of squirrels.
As the weeks went on, it seemed like I was noticing more strawberries, that I thought were almost ripe, missing the next day when I expected to find them ripe and ready to pick. Then last week I found a strawberry still in the garden box, with 3 bites out of it. Maybe I accidentally scared whatever was eating it away when it heard me walking its way? I'll never know for sure. But what I do know, is that something besides me is getting the good stuff after all the hard work I put in and that I had to do something about it, and fast. Squirrels. Previously cute, now turned evil, squirrels.
Luckily, a couple weeks ago I picked up some free partial rolls of chicken wire and some semi-decent looking scrap wood from someone giving away free stuff out of their shed on Craigslist.org. I had other ideas for using the chicken wire at the time, but this project was more important to me. After all, I really like strawberries - and squirrels are greedy!
I built a little chicken wire cage to protect my small strawberry patch. Here's a picture I hope gives a good enough idea of what it looks like:
I keep checking to see if there is a squirrel that managed to get in but not out, but nothing yet. I'm hoping I outsmarted the squirrels but after the YouTube videos I've seen about them I found out they're really bold and brave, so I'm not so sure. There are so many ideas for keeping squirrels out of strawberries Google Squirrels and Strawberries, including cages, covers, and squirrel repellents (even some wild animal urine - gross!).