@Weedwhacker @kittriana @antsinmypants @BetNC

Let's continue our gripes for pests here so we're not taking up the tomato thread. We need a thread just for mice ( or other rodents) anyway.

Kat, if your suspicions are true, then those flying squirrels may be my troubles instead of mice. I may be targeting the wrong pest but I'm still going to work on the mice anyway. We'll take my ammonia and spray that as well as my pepper mix where the squirrels are nesting. Time to get rid of them if I have to burn down the carport.

I wish I could rent a cat. I can't keep one because a coyote or raccoon would attack it or it would wander off.

I defy anything to go in that greenhouse now!! I put enough miscellaneous stuff to ward off a tyrannosaurus! Any critter would either not have a nose or wear a gas mask to enter.
I sprayed ammonia in and around the greenhouse. Laid a peppermint baggy on the table near the plants. Laid a cinnamon stick out. Sprinkled just a touch of Bonide critter repellant granules outside the front and back doors. Misted the surviving pots with my "Death by Hot Pepper" spray. Baited the live trap with bird
seed and popcorn and set it under the carport. Here's hoping I kill everything via smell or capture something in the trap.

Are YOU still able to breathe in there?

Barely.

Urk! I'm glad you didn't go the poison route. I'm actually not opposed to sticky traps when all else fails, but IMO you have to be conscientious about checking them at least once every day and humanely dispatching the pests. They're designed to trap an animal so it dies of thirst, and that's just a bad way to go. I found some a few years ago that incorporated an anesthetic agent into the glue, so the still-living animal was knocked out, rather than endlessly struggling.

Peanut butter does make a good bait since it doesn't easily lift away from the bait pedal. Another good one to try is to touch a flame (match, lighter) to the bottom of a chocolate chip, melting it slightly, then sticking it onto the bait pedal. Sometimes I put on a dab of peanut butter and top it with a chocolate chip... yeah, I'm evil like that.

I like the reusable snap traps that open like a big clothespin. I've found they are most effective if I line up 2 or 3, preferably against a wall, with about an inch between them. I have had a trap vanish entirely at times, which really makes you wonder... If that happens, tether the next one to something with a twist-tie.

Odd that peanut butter doesn't actually interest a squirrel, but my tree rats are definitely allergic to the pepper sprays, or hot pepper stuff - like a dog with a snootfull cannot stop sneezing. Doesn't work on deer, takes that garlicky stuff. I don't have chipmunks, amazing I don't as I have everything else...but I watched a squirrel hop across the yard to the area I had watered in some weed n feed and dig those tiny perfect holes. We are both bone dry and sloppy wet in low areas, but no water standing anywhere. I have been watering the garden for a week now.
By the way, pepper draws ants - they think it is food - but I think with the ammonia stuff you may have canceled that attraction.

critterologist said:
Peanut butter does make a good bait since it doesn't easily lift away from the bait pedal. Another good one to try is to touch a flame (match, lighter) to the bottom of a chocolate chip, melting it slightly, then sticking it onto the bait pedal.

Many years ago, I had a problem with mice in my shed. Then I discovered shredded reese's cup wrappers in a corner. I forgot I had left a stash of Halloween candy in the shed, and the mice found it during the winter. Maybe miniature peanut butter cups for bait for mice and rats?

We've tried both Reese's and plain peanut butter for bait. Nothing works anymore; even the popcorn and bird seed failed to catch anything. I'm at a loss. I am grateful that nothing seemingly got in the greenhouse last night but I can't keep up spraying everything every night. The pests need to go one way or another if I have to spend the night outside with a gun.

Try a smelly brand of cat food.

THAT will bring the coons and possums, chuckl...what if you are going about it the wrong way? flying squirrels follow a set flying pattern, diet is fruit, nuts, insects, small birds, meat scraps. A shallow dish of water, I do not see where they would bother plants unless an insect is involved, or an acorn...

I've never heard of flying squirrels being garden pests. Maybe "flying" was just a descriptive term applied to regular squirrels?

Anne, if you're still thinking it's mice, put out a couple of sticky traps. Mice like to run along edges (next to a nursery flat, along a wall), so just put the sticky trap in their potential path, with or without bait.

If I remember correctly, the flying squirrels were carport pests.

The squirrels are carport pests but I'm sure they crawl around like nasty little rodents trying to see what we big dumb humans have out for them to play with and eat.
I'm not saying 100% that the squirrels are the greenhouse bandits, I'm not ruling out mice. Maybe I should set up my game camera in there...

Anne, do you have squirrels (red or grey) or flying squirrels in your carport? Dad's flying squirrel friend (who came for a dab of PB on the windowsill every night for years) used to nest in a birdhouse...

Our deck squirrels (which we do feed) keep trying to dig up daffodils in the railing planters, not sure if they are checking for edibility or just digging holes for sunflower seeds.

@critterologist I have flying squirrels in the carport and they previously were crawling and running around in the eaves of the house. (Not in the attic, the outdoor perimeter of it) The regular/daytime squirrels (usually little grey ones not the bigger ones with brown in their tails) stay in the woods and trees outside the fence like good little critters.

Set your camera up, I personally never met a good squirrel, grey here also, I don't feed them, but they do get the seeds cleaned up behind the birds.

Wow, Anne, I've never seen more than 2 flying squirrels at a time... they are usually so shy... or at least they are in PA! Them Texas squirrels, on the other hand...

I guess it's like chipmunks. 1 or 2 = adorable. 47 = trouble.

Our main goal with the bird feeders is to feed birds. For years, we had ONE squirrel who would come to the back patio door and clean up under the feeders... we started putting peanuts on the doormat for him... kitty TV! Then he found himself a missus...

Now I have a feeder within easy reach of the squirrels, filled mostly with inexpensive sunflower seeds. If I keep that full, they pretty much ignore the millet and safflower in the other feeders (they prefer sunflower). I do add a ton of cayenne pepper to peanut butter and PB suet cakes to keep them out of that. One squirrel last year must have lacked the taste buds for "hot! hot!" and just gobbled up the spicy peanut butter. Fortunately, he doesn't seem to have survived or produced offspring.

Idk but I'm at my wits end. Despite the peppermint pouch, cinnamon stick, critter granules and ammonia spray, a mouse bit off my newborn marigolds and chewed up my last desert rose seedling. It's time for poison. There is NOTHING else to do. It's either poison or give up on being able to have a greenhouse. This is war and I'm not going to take it anymore.

One option not on the list so far is the DIY 5 gallon bucket trap. It's great for target rich environments like a greenhouse. One trap...many kills. It's not for the squeamish. You could have handful or more of drowned mice a day to deal with.

The downside of poison is that it can make your mouse problem worse. You tend to also kill or weaken mouse predators who eat the poisoned mice. Since the mice breed much, much faster than most of their predators it sets you up for a situation where your mouse population potentially explodes later in the year.

@PattyPan Thanks for sharing the idea about the 5 gallon bucket trap. I've never heard of that before, but after doing a google search, I think it is a great idea. If I ever get into rodent issues again, I'm definitely going to try that.