Varmint City Around Here

I'm close to being resigned to having no vegetable garden this year aside from the tomatoes and peppers.  The *%#^$ ground squirrels have gotten all of the rest of it, now even the little squash plants.  I'm pretty sure they at least nibbled the tomato plants too, and hopefully found them not tasty enough to devastate. I guess it was a dry enough winter and the squirrels produced a bumper baby crop this year and they don't have enough other food to eat?  Dino suggested that I install myself behind one of the big manzanitas in the orchard with a pellet gun and pick them off one by one, typical man thing to say.  As if.  Not to say that I don't have a big grudge. 

Furthermore, the grasshoppers are busy growing and chewing.  On one of last weekend's walks, I was snapping some shots of an interesting native plant (oh, that was probably an invasive too) and amongst the leaves:  yes.  A six-legged plant muncher. 

However, with the success of two kestrel nests around here - three fledged and five darn close to it - and given the fact that the favorite food of kestrels is grasshoppers, I feel downright thrilled that some hoppers are going to be food.  Soon and the more the better.