Well I have finally given up all hope that squirrels can be kept from eating the new shoots once they have developed a taste for them... I have been applying a distateful concoction (a slurry of used kitty litter) to the shoots but now the squirrels only wait till the shoots are out of my reach before attacking them. It is profoundly depressing to see the squirrels decapitating (and essentially destroying) the lovely 3' diameter, 20 foot tall shoots just before they start branching out... I now realize what was behind the slow decline and eventual dying-off of my neighbor's one acre patch of running bamboo... At the time I thought that it must have flowered... Now I realize that it was the squirrels who were responsible for it's demise... It essentially comes down to a choice of bamboos or squirrels... I don't think that one can have both (once the squirrels learn to eat them)...