2025, animals, gardening, Nature, Uncategorized

Squirrels Vs Hazelnuts

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This Summer has been one of the wettest on record here in western ND. Our veggie garden and flower beds are looking great. The trees are also looking quite happy.

We have a couple of hazelnut trees at the northwest corner of the house.

They are loaded with at the nuts, so that the thin branches are drooping lower and lower as the nuts get bigger and heavier.

We have never actually harvested any of the nuts because they disappear before we can pick them. I always notice an increased presence of sq6uirrels as the nuts ripen every year. I have seen squirrels with clusters of nuts in their mouths running along the top of our our neighbor’s fence as a bluejay shrieked “Thief!” in the way blujays do. I have never, ever, though, seen a squirrel in the hazel trees. The nuts are all at the outer ends of very thin branches. The nuts get removed right from the tree. Although the branches are sagging with the weight of the nuts, the lowest ones are still a good 3 feet off the ground and the ones at the top of the trees disappear, too. The only thing I can think is that the squirrels somehow crawl to the ends of these very thin branches, tear off the nuts, and leap to the ground. We find hoards of shells buried in the flowerbeds in the Spring. I think they really enjoy them.

Let’s talk rodents. Any good stories?

37 thoughts on “Squirrels Vs Hazelnuts”

  1. Our squirrels are just fun to watch. However, rabbits (who aren’t rodents) have wrecked havoc on our garden. We’ve had a mild couple of winters here and, as a result, bunnie 🐇🐇🐇 production has been high, yielding many mouths to feed. Many, many mouths. We’ve fought them off with chicken wire fencing and granulated fox urine (which gives our garden a unique aroma). 🙄

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  2. Many years ago, the company hired several biology majors out of Concordia, Moorhead for summer work. They weren’t apprentices but were go-fers. Not exactly a dignified designation. So I began using the scientific classification for gophers: spermophilus. The young men got a kick out of that. Unfortunately, spermophilus’ have been divided up into more specific species so technically I can’t use that terminology.

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  3. Many decades ago, Sandra and I went on a camping trip to the UP of Michigan. While camped at one state park, we were annoyed by a chipmunk who wouldn’t leave us alone after we’d shooed him away several times. Finally, Sandra resorted to throwing pebbles at the lil’ rascal to scare him more (if she managed to hit him). When the pebbles ran out, she tossed a small rock at him–maybe an inch in diameter. Believe it or not, she hit him right in the head. We actually heard the clunk of the rock on his skull. He toppled over and lay still. Sandra panicked, thinking she’d killed him. But after 15-20 seconds, he stood up and spun in circles, chattering wildly for about a minute.

    We were relieved he was alive, of course. He left and never returned during our stay at that site. Mission accomplished.

    But the strange part is, we weren’t bothered by chipmunks or ground squirrels for many years afterward, no matter where we camped. It was if he’d sent a telepathic radio broadcast to all campsite rodents across the country to avoid the woman camper with (nearly) deadly aim.

    Chris in Owatonna

    **BSP** If you’re Up North this Saturday in north central Minnesota, don’t miss me and 34 other regional authors, and many dozens of visual artists, at the fabulous Northwoods Art and Book Festival in Hackensack, MN. Hours are 9 am to 3 pm. It’s an amazing event put on for more than 25 years by a town of only 300 residents. There will also be music, food, fun and games, a keynote speaker or two, and lots of blueberry pie. I hope to see you there. **END BSP**

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  4. The city of Minot. ND is overrun with Richardson’s Ground Squirrels who are causing lots of damage to lawns and landscaping. There aren’t enough coyotes in the city limits to keep the population down. I think they need a brace of terriers to manage the problem.

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  5. I had three huge black walnut trees in my yard when I lived in Waterville. The squirrels were always there, always busy, very fat, and also feisty. They actually threw black walnuts down onto the ground, the roof of my garage and house, and even on me – I saw them do it. I had no love for black walnut trees in those days. They just exacerbated the misery I already felt there. I was entertained by the squirrels but they liked to leave black walnut parings all over. Sometimes they’d grind away the husks, then simply abandon the nut for me to step on.

    I secretly fed birds on my deck all winter. Squirrels discovered the easy food source and figured out how to get up on the deck via tree highways.

    There are Franklin’s ground squirrels up in Two Harbors where my condo is. I think they’re a prairie species, but they’ve begun to move to the northeast due to habitat loss. It’s interesting to see them. There are also red squirrels, gray squirrels, and chipmunks.

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  6. OT: My offer on a new, one-level condo was accepted yesterday. I think my closing date is September 4. I’m going to clean and paint the new place before moving in. I’m going to start packing here, but I won’t list this place until it’s empty.

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      1. The people who live there have two cats! I’m having an inspection done next week. I don’t think there are any mice, but you never know. I’ll check.

        When I looked at it a couple of days ago, I noticed the person there had two cats. I took off my shoes outside and walked around in there in my bare feet. I could feel the cat litter all over the floor even though the place looked and smelled very clean. I will be having the carpets professionally cleaned before I move in!

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  8. On a grassy boulevard on the corner of a busy intersection on the major highway out of our town, a rather chubby prairiedog has set up shop, and is managing two mounds. Someone put a plastic bouquet of flowers between the mounds to mark the location so that the City doesn’t mow there.

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    1. Our Cesky Terrier shakes things with the same ferocity as the terriers in the video. He has not had the opportunity to catch a rodent, however.

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  10. I’ve been reading about the arctic ground squirrel. During its hibernation of up to 7 months, its brain shrinks in synaptic function and the gap is filled with protein. It looks like that of severe Alzheimer patients. Total memory loss. But every two weeks the rodent shivers to bring the brain back to life for a few hours and the blocking protein is removed. At the end of these repeated cycles and hibernation, the squirrel has complete memory restored! Researchers are hoping to understand the process so as to develop therapies to treat brain disease.

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  11. When we had the cows, and loose corn around, we had lots of rats in the corn crib. Eventually as we got to the end of the crib, our dog Zack would be in the crib with me and he was good at killing rats. And the day I saw about 8 rats sunning on the roof of the crib is the day I called the exterminator.
    And of course we had mice in the house, especially in the fall. We joke about Kelly in her bathrobe with a flashlight and plastic baseball bat hunting mice in the middle of the night.
    We have quarterly rodent control.

    I’ve told the story of trying to report about a squirrel in a grainbin, and I couldn’t spell sqirrel, sqriell, scqurrel!

    Lots of squirrels around our place now. Bailey doesn’t like them. Well, maybe it’s not that she doesn’t like them, it’s that they run and she has something to chase. Raccoons are my biggest issue; they kill the chickens. I am not a fan of raccoons.

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  13. The chipmunks are rampant this year, so much so that they’ve harvested most of our ripe tomatoes and now have started in on the green ones as well. They’ve taken a ripe pepper and chewed into my eggplants. At this rate it’s not worth planting vegetables.

    Both mice and rats belong to the family Muridae, so they are murine as cats are feline and dogs canine. I always wondered why the eye drop company, Murine, chose that name.

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  15. I don’t have too much trouble with the various varmints that have been mentioned. I have one bird feeder that I actually call the squirrel feeder and that seems to keep them satisfied. Although I do pick my big tomatoes the minute they start to ripen. None of the critters seem to care about the cherry tomatoes or the other veggies/herbs. And only a couple of my hostas in back get targeted. Don’t if I’m lucky enough to have planted non-popular hostas or if Guinevere keeps them scared off.

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  16. I love watching them – the squirrels and chipmunks – chasing, balancing on electrical wires, even negotiating the baffle meant to deter them on bird feeders. I think they are some of the most intelligent and determined creatures on the planet.

    That said, I don’t have to keep them away from my crops… And when we had pear trees in our back 40 in Robbinsdale, it was years before there were enough pears on the tree that we actually got to have some of them.

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