Depending on my mood I see our yard either as a sort of groovy, permacultural exercise in “abundance” or as an overpriced rodent feeder. It occurred to me this morning that we’ve been, inadvertently, running an experimental squirrel fruit buffet for ten years.

Perhaps it would be informative to see what trays in the buffet have any fruit left for the resident hominids. Towards that end, I’ve created an annoying, animated emoticon scale ranging from one to five squirrels with five being the most favored fruits and one being the least favored.

In the give up all hope category:

Figs:
Everyone loves figs. Raccoons, squirrels, rats and even Roman emperors. I’ve even seen raccoons, in the middle of the day, feasting on our delicious Mission fig. It’s easy to see why. There’s nothing like a fresh fig. And fig season is so frustratingly short. Kind of like our youth!

Apples:
We have two trees, a Winter Banana and a Fuji. The squirrels are welcome to the mealy Winter Banana apples. But those Fujis are just about the tastiest apple I’ve ever eaten. The squirrels usually manage to get them all.

Persimmons:
We have both the non-astringent and astringent types of persimmons. The squirrels like to take a bite out of them before they are ripe, thus leaving them to rot on the tree. Persimmons take so long to mature that I doubt I’m going to get any this year before the squirrels get to them.

Peaches:
I managed to harvest a few thanks to throwing some netting over the tree. But I was so stressed out by the prospect of finding the tree stripped of fruit that I became unpleasant to live with.

On the more hopeful side:

Avocados:
The damage here is more from rats than squirrels, I think. Typically, I’ll find an avocado with one bite near the stem on the ground. The good news is that those partially chewed avocados are, usually, still edible.

Pomegranates:
I think this is the real winner in the squirrel/human fruit buffet fight. I’ve found squirrels trying to eat them but they have to chew through the thick and unappetizing skin. Plus the tree has hidden, wicked thorns. The downside is that these two qualities also make them difficult to harvest and eat. I use what we call the pomegranate spanking method to release the seeds. Squirrels have not yet figured this out.

What fruits do you manage to wrestle from the squirrels? What have you noticed in your garden?