7-17 IAN Strawberry Lizards

 Strawberries under attack by lizards.

 Very dear friends and gentleman farmers Ray and Kate Eldridge, raising a sizable spread of fruits and vegetables on their land, shocked me on the golf course recently.  They work their plot relentlessly up in the foothills of Boise which is rife with fruit and vegetable predators. But this is a new one on me. Here’s Ray: “Well David we started this strawberry patch last year. The 1st year we worked pretty hard keep the blossoms down and the fruit down and grow the plants. This year the plants have produced amazing blossoms and parts of many many berries. We are growing both ever bearing and June bearing plants. As the fruit begins to mature, suddenly parts of berries start disappearing wholesale but it’s only portions of the fruit. We have deduced that since we have this berry patch netted, that it is not birds and that we have a great deal of lizards and we are not sure exactly whether they are sagebrush lizards or finch lizards. We have had to take pretty dramatic measures to keep these lizards out. The type of damages that they will eat the whole berry right down to the stem? No no no. They just want part of the berry. I think these lizards are precocious males so they get excited about one thing and then they get excited about the next thing which happens to be another berry so they eat part of that to. My feeling is that it is safe to say you will not be buying Geico insurance in the near future. We are not lizard fans and I think Geico should keep their lizard out of Southern Idaho.