Nemesis

Texas gardners have their share of pests to deal with. Anyone who's tried to grow so much as a square foot of grass in this state is well aware of that fact. It seems that every new plant comes with its very own special pests to defeat. And BONUS! If your plants happen to survive the many many bugs that want to devour them at any stage of their pre-fruit bearing life cycle, you then get to wage war against the many squirrels and birds that would love to get their grubby little paws (or beaks) on your precious fruit.

Nothing infuriates me (or my husband) more than losing that almost ripe tomato to a squirrel only to find it slightly nibbled and tossed aside, because, I don't know, I guess it didn't taste good enough. Well no crap, IT'S NOT RIPE. Someone should really teach those squirrels about all the starving children in China.

Back to the whole "waging war" thing. Did you think I was exaggerating? I am not. At all. Not one little bit. Last year when our precious Cherokee Purples started producing we couldn't wait to enjoy our first juicy tomato. Then we came home from work one day to find a just ripening tomato, lightly nibbled, discarded near it's plant. And the battle was on. We tried bird netting, but the little bastards just figured out how to get under it. So, we took it to the next level with an electric fence, which worked pretty well. At least well enough for us to not be pissed off every day.

Well, this year the garden is WAY too big for an electric fence to be affordable, and the bird netting has been working as well as it did last year (read "not at all").

We decided our final step would be to set some humane traps and see if we couldn't bring an end to this insanity. On day two of having the traps up...Victory! I must confess we were a little excited. Abi was excited as well.

Although it turns out her vicious gaze (or more likely the heat) was to much for him.While it wasn't our intention, the little guy was gone before we got home.

None of our tomatoes have been touched since, so we may have been dealing with one pesky little squirrel who decided to make his home in our neighbor's pecan tree and use our garden as his grocery store. RIP nemesis.