Subject: Re: Eastern Gray Squirrel's effect
Date: Oct 17 10:53:31 1996
From: Dennis Paulson - dpaulson at mirrors.ups.edu


Dan Victor wrote:

>A number of years ago I was taking a SAS birder class and I remember a
>woman in the class telling of how she 'captured' Gray Squirrels entering
>her yard on Mercer Island. She would transport them some(?) distance off
>the island and drop them off. Eventually she was able to do all her bird
>feeding on the ground.

This is clearly an example of the NIMBY syndrome, where it's OK to have a
problem somewhere else, but not in my back yard. Don't worry, Dan, I've
already given this person a lot of grief for transporting her "garbage"
elsewhere. And I admitted I wasn't holier than thou; I've trapped several
raccoons in my yard and transported them to Carkeek Park. Like her, I'd
have trouble killing a squirrel just to remove it from my yard, much less a
raccoon, but I "control" squirrels by not giving them access to the bird
feeders. They can take what they want that spills on the ground, and yes,
the rats get the same spillage at night, although we do occasionally trap
and kill them; I guess we're speciesists like everyone else. Raccoons are
another story; I can't take their trashing of my precious pond, so they get
trapped and removed--but since we fenced our yard, both raccoon and cat
visits really have diminished a lot.

But trapping and moving them a few miles in the same urban area are
certainly not the ultimate solutions to these pest animals. And guess one
of the ways by which eastern gray squirrels have spread so rapidly in the
region....

Dennis Paulson, Director phone 206-756-3798
Slater Museum of Natural History fax 206-756-3352
University of Puget Sound e-mail dpaulson at ups.edu
Tacoma, WA 98416