On the House: Outfoxing bulb-thief squirrels

I've succeeded in keeping squirrels out of my new backyard flower bed for four full months. Of the 150 daffodil, hyacinth and tulip bulbs I planted on a warm Sunday afternoon in early November, 142 of them have broken through mulch-covered soil.

I can't claim all the credit. Climate change kept the winter mild and virtually snowless, so the bushy-tailed rodents had easy access to whatever they had buried, carried up to their treetop nests, or found near trash cans.

A couple of weeks back, I watched a squirrel try to transport a taco shell from the street in front of my house, down my five-car-length driveway, through the back gate, across the yard, and up a tree. Every time the squirrel moved the shell a few feet, it broke into two more pieces. Still, the squirrel would drag what it could to the base of the tree, and keep going back to retrieve the rest.

Emmy, our beagle, also must get credit for the rodent conquest. She left evidence of her existence on the flower bed regularly to discourage intruders.

Let me say that Emmy did not patrol the garden out of love for me. I regularly sprayed the area with fox urine that I picked up for a few bucks at the Berlin Agway, and, well, she is a beagle.

Or, as they say in England, yoike, yoikes and tally-ho.

The third note of appreciation goes to the manufacturer of hardware cloth, the best deterrent to squirrel invasion I've ever used. I bought just enough at the hardware store to cover the garden and held it in place with plastic spikes designed for landscaping fabric.

On top of that I placed flat stones and bricks, covered by the contents of eight bags of pine mulch and all the leaves that didn't make it to the borough's fall leaf collection.

You need to be as tenacious and crafty as squirrels, which, as any homeowner knows, tend to be smarter than us.

Well, at least me.

Using hardware cloth to cover the bulbs comes with risks, of course. If you don't time its removal properly, the bulb shoots have no place to go, unless you find a way to lay the cloth so that the shoots can come through holes one-inch square.

So you make a note on the calendar of the planting day and the approximate date one can expect a tulip, hyacinth or daffodil to break the ground.

I'm not sure, but I think keeping bulbs covered this way can prevent an early bloom if there's a warm spell.

If this seems like too much work or sounds like too much money, let me reassure you.

The bulbs were half-price because it was so late in the season. The hardware cloth was $8, the spikes $4, the mulch $19. The fox urine was $5. Other than the drive to Berlin, which is 16 miles round trip - I also brought electronics to recycle at the Camden County complex the same day - I traveled a distance of three miles round trip for materials.

It took about three hours to prepare the soil, plant the bulbs, and cover the beds.

The fact that I beat the squirrels at their own game was, however, priceless.

If you're thinking about writing, phoning or e-mailing me with your squirrel problems, or trying to get me to write about your innovative squirrel-expulsion inventions, don't.

I've never had much luck expelling squirrels from any house. I have always resorted to professionals to do it for me, no matter how much it cost, because they can do it quickly, efficiently and humanely.

I've had more success keeping squirrels from getting in, making sure entrances were blocked, keeping exterior trim and eaves in good repair, cleaning gutters, and trimming tree branches away from the house to limit access to the roof.

Now, of course, I can crow about all 142 awakening bulbs in the back garden. I'll spend the next six months trying to figure out how I'm going to keep the squirrels out of that garden next winter.