Rabbits and mice, therefore, had to be dealt with.  Of course, one could go hunting for rabbits and later eat them.  This was one task I had my employees do.  I, myself, was unwilling to take an active part in it, although still intent on saving my trees in spite of my pity for the little animals.  Placing hundreds of cans in the orchard, with a pinch of poisoned wheat and oat mixture in each, helped to eradicate the mice.  The bait was placed inside the cans to prevent birds from being poisoned, and the cans were tipped at an angle so that water would not enter them.

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: 

[Illustration:  Drwg. by Wm. Kuehn. Squirrel guards.]