"Something is eating my bulbs," the Spiritual Adventuress emergency emailed her Garden Guru neighbor Betsy. "What do I use to ward them off? Lion urine? Wing of bat?” Many fall hours were spent planting 200 individual daffodil, tulip and hyacinth bulbs in holes lined with bone meal anticipating glorious yellow, pink, purple and blue spring blooms. Another neighbor walking her dogs said, “Squirrels do that,” and I knew there was at least one grey one with a plumed tail around. I’d heard him romping on my roof, watched him running up stucco walls, seen him nibbling pyracantha berries through my front window and noticed the neighbor’s cat stalking him on her roof.
Greeting me over our now-dormant, morning-glory
fence, Betsy told me, “I think Sherman Alexie is doing it.” She was referring
to an earlier conversation we had during which a grey squirrel ran across the
yard and stopped to stare at us. When we finished talking about a local book signing I attended with the award-winning,
Native American short story writer, I went inside to finish reading TIME
magazine. The Q&A feature was about. . . Sherman
Following her first suggestion led to an
entertaining online conversation thread and creative potential solutions. If
you have ever felt alone, you will learn you are not. Everything is connected. Someone,
somewhere has faced your challenge before and done their best to cope with it
by using crushed oyster shells, hot sauce, hot pepper flakes, chicken wire,
blood meal, mothballs, bulb cages, cats, mesh hardware cloth, a trap, sling
shot, pellet gun, human urine, or just planting deeper and feeding squirrels at
the birdfeeder. The give and take, like a call-and-response, was enlightening:
“My husband has some hot sauce he bought at the Renaissance
Faire called Satan’s Blood, and you have to sign something just to buy this
stuff. I have wondered about putting some on a bulb just for them. You are
supposed to use just a drop in a whole pot of chili. Don't
do the hot pepper. They get it on their paws, they rub their eyes. Not good. So
don't do that.”
“Feed
them. That helps. I have a birdfeeder that the squirrels eat from, and they
have not bothered my bulbs yet.
Maybe it is just in our yard, but when I have tried feeding the squirrels, they
descend upon the yard in droves. Once the feeder is emptied of peanuts, they
come into the yard and begin to dig. So feeding actually made the original
digging problem worse. Perhaps our squirrels are special : ) Maybe
mine are just lazy! They dig so well they should be helping me
plant. They can have a share if they do some of the work.”
The most creative answer (although I question its
veracity!) was fried squirrel, or move: “I bought a live trap at the hardware
store designed for rabbits or squirrels. I set it out in my garden and baited
it. When I caught a squirrel, I took it on the back porch, dispatched it,
skinned, gutted, cut into pieces. Inside for a good wash and soak, coat in flour,
salt, cook in hot oil until done. Yummy! I took out about a dozen squirrels
that way before they quit coming around. It handled the situation for the year,
but then I moved to a neighborhood that doesn't have squirrels (very new area,
no established trees). So I'll have to go out hunting if I want squirrel
dinner, rather than letting the little fellows come to me.”
My solution was to tamp down the disturbed garden
soil and water down the flower bed thinking this cat-litter-box solution might
also be a squirrel-bulb-eating solution. Keep the soil damp since they don’t
like muddy paws. There’s been no further digging. Enjoying the whole experience
just as it is, is a spiritual practice. Let it be. Choose peace. Recognizing
the universality of the experience, how everything, everyone, is connected, is
a spiritual experience. Enjoying the humor of incredible synchronicities, confirms cosmic playfulness and divine order. All these illustrate the following pronouncements of essential
truth from Deepak Chopra, author of 65 books, and one of the TIME 100
(Most Influential People in the World):
“The healthiest response to life is joy.”
“The purpose of life is the expansion of happiness.”
“According to Vedanta, there are only two symptoms
of enlightenment, just two indications that a transformation is taking place
within you toward a higher consciousness. The first symptom is that you stop
worrying. Things don't bother you anymore. You become light-hearted and full of
joy. The second symptom is that you encounter more and more meaningful
coincidences in your life, more and more synchronicities. And this accelerates
to the point where you actually experience the miraculous.”
