Varmint!

Just after moving in I planted some ceramic planters with a mix of petunias, salvia and coreopsis. Well, a few days later all the coreopsis and petunia flowers had been eaten off! I hadn't seen many creatures besides birds, so I at first attributed it to some flower eating bird. But then the petunia stalks began to disappear. I have never heard of any animal eating petunias! Who would eat a sticky, hairy stem like that?

The next victim was my one tomato plant. One healthy large stem was eaten to the ground, and the other stem had all the leaves eaten off. The basil around it was untouched, so I thought maybe whatever it was didn't like things in the mint family. Then, the basil leaves started to disappear! So we now have a basil, tomato and petunia eating critter. The only thing it hadn't touched was the salvia. Finally, Jake and I caught the mystery critter in action. It was what I had been thinking was a grey squirrel with a bad dye job. Turns out is a rock squirrel, well known occasional produce pest. See http://www.desertusa.com/animals/rock_squirrel.html for a photo and more information on the infamous rock squirrel.

I gave up on the tomato, but I put a hardware cloth cage around the remaining basil plants and sticks in the ceramic planters that seem to be deterring the rock squirrel. Or maybe it is just waiting for the coreopsis and petunias to flower again! One good thing about the rock squirrel is that it has made no attempt to climb onto the bird feeder but is content with the spilled seeds.