JULY / AUGUST 2004

The squirrel, it turned out, was living in the sofa bed.

A refugee from my attic, he had made his way down through two stories of 100-year-old walls onto the back porch after the roofers blocked up his normal egress via holes under the gutter. When I first spied him, scurrying behind the houseplants, I opened the outside door and exited, hoping he would take the hint. A shredded birdseed bag with a 3-foot wide pile of seed on the floor the next morning indicated otherwise. As days passed, little chunks of foam rubber began dotting the ceramic tile floor, suggesting to my inner Columbo that he had taken up residence in the sofa cushion and was now building a nest.

When yanking the sofa around and yelling proved useless, I decided to open up the sofa bed. Off with the slipcover, off with the seat cushions, up with the mattress, and out popped the squirrel. I shrieked, ran to open the back door, and this time he got the message. He’ll probably be back. The condo next door has a honeylocust tree now tall enough to make it easy for any squirrel in the land to waltz onto my roof and start chewing his way in. I may be doomed to live with squirrels.

Others among you are doomed to deer, woodchucks, geese, rabbits, raccoons, moles, voles (although not inside your houses, she said enviously.) And our gardens succumb to Japanese beetles, striped potato beetles, flea beetles, cabbage moths, gypsy moths, aphids, slugs, snails, tomato hornworms, squash borers, spider mites and more. In our last issue Michelle Byrne Walsh surveyed the problem of underground marauders like moles. In this issue Donna Freedman takes a wry look at slugs while William Aldrich serves up the exquisite ornamental-edible garden of Frank Mariani where fencing out the deer has had the unforeseen side effect of fencing in other nuisances like rabbits. Seems it’s always Critters 1, Humans 0.

Yet except for the ongoing squirrel saga, my life is fairly pest free. The first years I gardened, I did indeed have masses of aphids, ugly green encrustations atop the tender shoots of roses and tomatoes. But as years passed and I introduced different kinds of plants—particularly natives—into my garden, I noticed one day that I didn’t have an aphid problem anymore. I have lots of insects—Culver’s root (Veronicastrum) really attracts bumblebees, for example—and I assume they’re keeping things in some kind of balance. I’ve had Japanese beetles for 20 years (the first time I saw one I squealed with delight at its beauty!) but I’ve learned to snatch and squish rather than run for the rose dust, and their numbers have also declined. There are snails and slugs, but that’s my own doing since I mulch heavily. It’s a trade off, and I’m living with the choice I’ve made (more snatch and squish).

Pests aren’t going to disappear—nor should they. Everything has a place in the food chain. Yet by reducing chemical use and increasing biodiversity, we can truly improve the quality of life in our gardens and even the larger world (although I’m afraid it won’t do much for squirrels in the sofa bed).