Why Forage When You Can Go to the Buffet?

People often ask me how I keep the squirrels, rabbits and other vermin out of my garden. It’s easier than you think: I just feed them other stuff in a location that’s safer and therefore more attractive to them.

For some reason, the rabbits in the neighborhood leave the garden alone. I see them eating grass and weeds in the lawn, but never my tender veggies. The squirrels are another story, though. We have a lot of squirrels in our neighborhood, and their sweet tooth leads them to favor our just under-ripe melons, plums and peaches. They use the fences between yards as squirrelly highways. Running along the top of the fence keeps them off the ground and gives them a safe vantage point for taunting the dogs penned in the yards.

I discovered several years ago that in addition to trying to figure out my squirrel-proof bird feeder, the squirrels were often raiding my compost pile – at least when I dumped something good, like pineapple peelings or melon rinds. They can reach it easily from the fence without having to venture out to the middle of my open, shelter-less yard. So now that I have a fancy compost corral, I leave the good stuff sitting around the edges for the squirrels to eat without having to dig through the whole pile.

One of my local squirrels helps himself to a corncob that we left for him on the compost corral.

Whether it’s corn cobs, melon rinds or apple cores, we tuck our scraps in between the logs of the compost corral for the squirrels to find. Dennis calls it the Squirrelly Buffet. It’s free entertainment for us to watch them climb all over the corral like it’s a big jungle gym. Watching them try to haul off a corn cob or melon rind that’s as big as they are is an absolute hoot. They typically drag their find a few feet down the fence and up the tree that hangs over into my yard from the neighbor’s house.

The fully gnawed corn cobs end up a few feet down the fence from the compost pile.

I know it’s generally considered a bad idea to feed wildlife, but letting the squirrels pick the leftovers out of my compost corral keeps them from making off with the real goodies from the garden and gives me lots of good laughs. I think I can live with the guilt.