Oh, my, you said the words that will bring the squirrel lovers out to beat you over the head. I hate those little fuzzy tailed rats with a passion. I do feed them in the winter, though.

We bought a live trap and bait it with peanuts in the shell and move them a few miles away. Also, had good luck putting moth balls in my caladium pots and that took care of them getting dug up all the time. I wonder if you could hang a bag of them in the tree away from and not above fruit. They hate the smell ( so do I).

I have used rat poison. The ground squirrels were gone, all of them within a week. It took two small boxes. They were eating my baby cantaloupe and tomatoes.

I tried alum flashing put around the tree trunk, live traps, feeding them food on the ground so they wont go in the trees. Nothing phases em. I was just looking at one squirrel stripping my Asian pear tree down. It was loaded with fruit a month ago and now is almost bare. Never mind the fruit wont ripen for months. I got 21 fruit trees. They all did not set cause of late frost. But maybe half had fruit. They strip the tree down that has the biggest unripe fruit then move onto the next. No tree can ever develop ripe fruit.

Pellet gun.

Kania traps.

But you pretty much have to have an active continual control program going all year round ... you can't wait until about the time they start stealing fruit.

It's frowned upon by wildlife biologists, and illegal in many states, to live-trap and relocate wildlife of any sort. If they're a nuisance and not an endangered/protected species, it's better to terminate them.