I Caught My Pumpkin Vandals in the Act!

November 3, 2008 by
Filed under: Home 

I found out who’s been munching on my pumpkins!

Here are a pair of squirrels who are eating on my next door neighbor’s pumpkins. I know they have been feasting on mine too.
What is curious is the squirrel on the right side by the pot. It looked like he or she was sleeping –

the squirrel didn’t move at all; even with my 4-year-old sneaking around in front of them with me.

then all of a sudden-

they both are alert and take off. Do squirrels sleep with their eyes open or have a weird-eyelid thing going on?… because this is the second squirrel I’ve seen in the past couple of months that looks, basically, dead, and then jumps up and runs away.

And- I didn’t know squirrels ate pumpkins. Are the neighborhood squirrels REALLY hungry or do they normally munch on pumpkins? Pumpkins aren’t easy to eat, then again, squirrels have pretty big teeth. But squirrels eating pumpkins on porches seems like ‘a bottom of the barrel’ type thing.

Am I right?

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5 Comments on I Caught My Pumpkin Vandals in the Act!

  1. De in D.C. on Mon, 3rd Nov 2008 1:31 pm

    2. LOL, I think it’s normal. I had a bag of corn gluten meal on my porch (natural lawn fertilizer/preemergent) and the squirrels actually ripped through the heavy plastic bag and were eating the fertilizer. I moved it to the shed and that’s when they started eating our pumpkins. I then covered them with a couple milk crates I use for gardening, and they still tried to eat the pumpkin through the crate!

  2. Stacy on Mon, 3rd Nov 2008 1:38 pm

    3. Oh Phew! At first I thought that was a rat! Squirrels I know just have good press but they are so much less … scream inducing.

  3. Shawn on Mon, 3rd Nov 2008 6:39 pm

    4. whew! at first glance, i thought they were rats, not squirrels (and for some reason, i’m thankful they’re squirrels).

    in answer to your question about the squirrel diet, they are primarily vegetarians, and live on seeds, nuts, fruits, pine cones, etc. so i’m not really surprised to see them eating pumpkins. (i mean, hey! free food!)

    i don’t know about the sleep thing… could be a kind of “suspended animation” thing to conserve energy, or to just throw off predators.

  4. Stimey on Mon, 3rd Nov 2008 9:01 pm

    5. I forgot to carve our pumpkins this year, but fortunately the squirrels helped us out by carving big holes in our pumpkins. If I were a squirrel, I think I would be very happy to find a free, stable source of food on a porch. 4-year-olds and all!

  5. Leticia- Tech Savvy Mama on Mon, 3rd Nov 2008 10:08 pm

    6. We call the squirrels pumpkin thieves! Every year they eat our pumpkins regardless if they are carved or not. It is so annoying! So this year we hid our pumpkins in the basement, carved them the night before, put them back in our basement, set them out on Halloween, and fed the pumpkin guts to the squirrels to prevent them from eating our jack-o-lanterns. So far it seems to have worked but they have finished the pumpkin guts so it is only a matter of time ’til they go after the rest!

    And like De, we’ve had squirrels rip through a pocket in our jogging squirrel to get to acorns that Little Miss Techie stashed in there!

    Is it me, or are the squirrels getting fatter????

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