I went out today and found a sad sight. My two Negronne main crop figs are gone as are most of my Hardy Chicago main crop figs. 

Culprit?


All kidding aside - no figs were harmed in the making of that photo. But something DID get to my figs. I'm about 95% sure it wasn't the pups... but within the big city of Seattle we have crows, rats, squirrels, and raccoons. I didn't think they'd go after a rock hard green fig but clearly I was wrong. 



They (whoever "they" are) also took big chomps out of my beautiful green bell peppers. Sigh.

The irony in all this is they left my brown turkey alone. Didn't touch it. And that thing is loaded with 20+ fruits and that's after I thinned it. Bastards.



I said a lot of four letter words this evening. Time to go find my inner zen.

...or a four letter glass of w i n e!

Sorry, not fun!!

Suzi

Nichole if whole figs were eaten whole and not just bit apart i would break apart some of your pets stools as you would likely see some remants of the fig skin if they were involved.

They were intact when I went to work and half eaten with chunks out of them when I got home. They don't have free reign of the yard while gone. There was about 5 minutes that they were out without me this evening but they were in the strawberry patch looking for berries (lol). The damage to the figs was not fresh. The wounds to the fruit had dried on the edges. So I can't say 100% not the dogs but very unlikely. 

(but I will check the poo to make certain)

looks like dog damage to me. Few weeks ago had a problem with one (or more) of my dogs suddenly deciding it was a good idea to start tearing limbs from one of my in-ground Verte trees. Rubbing super-hot miniature peppers called Chili Pequin on the damaged limbs saved their life (the dogs, I mean!).

Well the Chicago is set next to a trellis along my fence line. Two of the trees branches were pulled in and behind the trellis bars, between the trellis and the fence. I didn't put them there and the dogs surely cant. I was wondering squirrels myself because of that but wasn't sure if this is typical squirrel behavior as this is my first go at all this. 

Of the animals listed, looks like dog damage to me too. If you coax and pose the animal for a fig photo (cute one), it teaches him/her that there's something of interest there. That sort of damage would only have taken a few seconds. Hopefully the milk would discourage him/her from taking future tastes.

If a raccoon found some to his liking and then bit into one that he didn't like, the bite would look close to what you had left. Trying to cut the pups some slack. You could try a motion sensor activated camera, it might help in identifying the culprit.

In another thread I posted about putting plastic bags over the trees to act as mini green houses. I don't have the stakes to prop them up but I put them on anyway to at least offer a little cover.I've seen big fat raccoons in both of my immediate neighbors trees. I've had a feeling from the beginning it was going to be a mini war.

I'm not going to sweat it too much. We're looking at possibly buying some property outside of the city come the new year. Hopefully by this time next year I'll be cursing deer ;)

You might want to train your dogs like rob0520's dog in the other post.  :)

I agree! He's a good dog :)
Violet (the one pictured above) does a mighty fine job of chasing squirrels. She hates those things. One in particular likes to mess with her head. But once it's gone she snorts and heads back to the house with a swagger like she won the Squirrel-Chasing-Olympics.

Nichole here we had a squirrel that messed with Butch when he was alive and we had a wooden scallop type fence.
It wood run along the top of the fence and stop as Butch would bark at it the squirrel wood move a few feet look down at Butch and make a funny type noise that drove Butch wild. This was a site to see.

Always thought if that thing lost its balance and fell it would be gone in one bite. In his heyday he was 120 pounds.
He was was knock down briefly chasing a rabbit in full stride as we have large yard and i saw it coming as the rabbit ran all the way to back of yard a good distance and Butch on its tail and rabbit ran under the fence at last second and Butch smacked right into that wooden fence and went down on all 4s briefly.

Have 2 other dogs and as you know they are the best burglar alarm .
Butch was the 3rd named one and last as now we have Luigi and Romeo.

I'm losing a fair amount to birds and squirrels. Ants are attacking my in  ground Latarolla, but that can be fixed once I get to Lowes.