Critters are eating my strawberries! Help!

[kldickinson1]

At 10:30 this morning, I was eyeing the first ripening strawberry. When I went back out at 4 PM, it had been mostly eaten. The critter left me the unripened white part. Nice.

It's not bird damage; there are teeth marks. It's not a nibble; all of the sweet red part is gone.

I can tell that this is going to be a major problem if left unchecked. It's a smart animal, just like me - it waits until the fruit is nice and ripe, and then away it goes. What is doing this? Top contenders are squirrel and rabbit. Less likely would be vole or mouse (fruit is off the ground) or raccoon (wrong time of day) or skunk (no skunks in the area, at least not that anyone has smelled). I don't think it's a woodchuck, because there are loads of leafy greens which have been ready for months with no damage.

WHAT DO I DO TO PRESERVE MY CROP? Row cover? Poultry netting? Fence? AK-47?

[cartershan]

Hi there, we have the same problem here. We put netting over ours about 2 weeks ago and our berries were still being eaten. I put rubber snakes everywhere (DH got a kick out of that) and it didn't do a bit of good. One day last week I was in the garden and just happen to look the way of the strawberries and saw a mockingbird in there. He was sitting on the netting and pulling the netting down with his beak and his feet, thus eating the strawberries. I had honestly thought it was opossum. We put another layer of netting about 8 inches above the first layer of netting and have not had a problem since.
Hope this helps, Shannon