Maple Sugaring Time In Vermont Gives Us Another Reason To Hate Squirrels

A maple sugar maker shows some tubing chewed up by squirrels.

Trees are tapped in Vermont and the sap is flowing in sugarbushes as the annual maple season in the Green Mountain State is in full swing.

Yay!

It's all good news except for one thing: Squirrels are interfering with this maple enterprise.

People think squirrel, chipmunks and such are cute and I suppose they are.

They are also a nuisance, as anybody who tries to keep their bird feeders full for the birds and not the rodents. And as any gardener can tell you whos perennials are wrecked by squirrels.

It turns out maple producers in Vermont and elsewhere have had it, too. As has been widely reported in Vermont by the AP and others, squirrels are battling to prevent us from enjoying this year's crop of maple syrup.

Sugar makers rig plastic taps and tubing which lead the sap from sugar maples to holding tanks. The contents of those tanks are boiled down to make maple syrup. However, squirrels have been busily chewing up the tubes, apparently in an evil plot to divert the sweet sap to themselves.

As the AP reports, that forces sugar makers to work long and pricy hours repairing the lines and seizing the sap back for us humans:

"That means producers must go out into sometimes deep snow to find and replace the camaged lines that transport the sap from the maple trees or other chewed or missing equipment, which producers say can be time-consuming and expensive."

The squirrels apparently know how to make things particularly tough.  They try very hard to scatter the damage, making things all the harder. The AP again:

The trouble is the squirrels could take one bite of tubing and move another 100 feet where they take another bite, making the damage hard to find, said Lyle Merrifield, who is president of the Maine Maple Producers Association.

Clearly, squirrels are out to get us.