Mark Your Calendars

In our back yard we have a couple of palm trees that we planted back in 2007.  They were in small nursery pots and weren't 2 1/2 feet tall.  I don't even know how to estimate how tall these trees are.  They've weathered a number of hurricanes, straight-line winds, and snow and ice and sub 20 degree weather.  When the palm fronds die, they droop over and I've found that wasps love to make their nests underneath them.  I guess it provides for the wasps great protection from the weather.  On any given day you can see dozens of them flying around up there.  But I can't really do anything about it anymore.

Back when the trees were younger, I'd prop up a ladder and cut the dead fronds down, but that's out of the question now.  I mean, I can't even get the whole tree in the frame of the photo they have grown so tall!

I want to show you something on the bark of the palm tree in the center of the photo below.  If it looks like something is skinning it, that's because it is, and that something is a squirrel.  A cat squirrel.  We have more cat squirrels around here than you can shake a stick at.  The cat squirrels (officially called a gray squirrel) are numerous.  They've run off all the larger fox squirrels.  They eat all the acorns off of the live oak trees, they get into the pecan trees and eat a bunch of pecans, they get into the garden and dig things up and eat stuff. Every once in a while, Ginger, our cat, will catch one and eat it and leave its guts on the welcome mat outside the back door.  It's her trophy - her "look at me" moment. 

The damage that you're seeing on the palm tree's 'bark' is caused by squirrels.  I'm not just casting blame. I witnessed them doing it first hand.  They jump from the live oak tree to the house and run along the roof.  Then they jump into the crepe myrtle tree and shake the wind chime, alerting us to their presence.  Then they leap onto the palm tree and go to work.

What they're doing is balling up the fibrous material in the bark of the palm tree and carrying it off in their mouths.  They use this as building materials for their nests, to grow their young.  I scared one off the other day while she was gathering the palm bark material and she dropped her load.   You can see the stuff she dropped below and can see how its soft and probably makes excellent nest material. 

There's too many of the tree rats, and I plan to do something about in on October 4th.  October 4 marks the opening of squirrel season in South Louisiana.  I intend on thinning out the exploding population of cat squirrels, skinning them and then making a dark brown gravy with them in a cast iron skillet then serving the squirrels and gravy over a bed of white rice.  Comfort food at its finest.  I hope to put a good mess of them in our freezer.

October 4th is a date we'll want to mark on our calendar for sure!