To be absolutely sure of preventing mice damage, one should provide each tree with a screen guard. I have made about 10,000 screen protectors for my trees for this purpose. I have also trapped rabbits which we were not able to shoot and I conceived the idea of painting the traps with white enamel. When these were set on the snow around those trees which the rabbits attacked, they worked very successfully. The traps were a size larger than the common gopher trap, but were not expensive. There are other ways of catching rabbits or curtailing their activities, but on my list, shooting comes first, with trapping as a second effective measure.
Squirrels, although they do no damage to the trees themselves, except on rare occasions, are a definite nuisance when they come in large numbers and cut down nuts before they are ripe. They do this to hickory nuts, and apparently are very fond of the half-ripened nuts. I have seen squirrels chew hickory buds and young sprouts of hickory grafts and I had to trap several before I stopped them from doing this to certain ornamental trees in our garden. In fact, when one has a large nut orchard, squirrels will be attracted in number that preclude the possibility of harvesting a crop unless measures are taken to banish them. They are very active early in the morning and my experiences indicate that two or three people should hunt them together, as they are very clever at dodging a single hunter. I also have built galvanized metal guards around isolated trees which prevent squirrels from climbing them.
In speaking of mice, we have two important species commonly known as the meadow mouse and the other species known as the white-footed mouse. The meadow mouse is the one that does so much damage to the orchard trees and young nursery stock if unprotected, and the white-footed mouse may be responsible for some of this when present in great numbers, but of the white-footed mouse this much good can be said:
Squirrel guards.
Much of its diet, especially of the mother mouse during the time that she is nursing her young ones, is made up of insects. A personal experience accentuates this. Since these are such pretty little creatures, having such cunning ways, it was my ambition to catch a complete family of mother and young ones which sometimes numbered as high as ten. My ambition was finally gratified and I was able to get a mother of eight and her tiny mouslings, which have a habit of fastening themselves securely to her breasts while she runs about, and drags them all along in a most ludicrous fashion. At times, under these circumstances, the combined weight of the brood exceeds that of the mother mouse but they are exceptionally strong creatures for their size, a mature mouse being able to jump out of a 3-foot barrel with one leap. In observing this brood of mice, I was particularly anxious to see what kind of a diet they throve on and tried the mother's appetite with tidbits from the table. While she ate most everything, it soon became apparent that something was wrong because the young ones became weaker, finally to the extent that they were unable to nurse, and one morning I found several on their backs with their feet feebly waving in the air indicating that they were dying of starvation. At about that time I was drying some hazelnuts on a flat back porch floor and in sweeping them up found a lot of alive and dried up larvae which had escaped from the shells. Just for fun, I swept this material up and threw it into the mouse cage. The reaction of this treatment was gratifying, for the mother mouse pounced upon this insect life greedily devouring everything. Within three days, the young mice were all in good health and running around showing that the milk produced from the diet that I had been giving the mother was inadequate for the baby mice. It is therefore to their credit to state that these mice and probably at times the meadow mice do consume large quantities of larvae and grubs in the surface soil, as well as mature active insects, such as crickets and grasshoppers.
HOW TO PREPARE RODENT PROTECTORS FOR TREES
1. Cut 6" strips from 24" wide roll of galvanized screen with a 12 x 12 mesh.
2. Cut strips in half to make two protectors from each strip.
3. Make bundles of 25 each by running wire through protectors.