Why? Why-y-y-y-y?Some of you may remember my posts about the Squirrel Wars from several years ago (and if you don’t, they’re entertaining reading). The more astute among you may note that the posts ranged over many years. This is the fight of the suburbanite: to forever participate in the battle between the furry little rodent and your birdseed.
FYI, the squirrel usually wins.
We had reached something of a draw when I bought a hopper feeder whose pan slams shut when anything heavier than a small bird sits on the perch. They took a while before figuring out they could hang from the top and acrobatically grab a bite to eat without touching the pan. Meh. At least they’re not eating it in two days.
The suet, meanwhile, is safe, between the cage and the squirrel baffle covering it so they can’t drop down on top of it like furry little commandos.
Problem solved, more or less…until the tree planted beside my hopper feeder got so big it was obscuring the feeder and providing them a handy branch to climb along to get to the hopper pan.
Didn’t take the little monsters long to learn how to shake the tree limb until lots of seed falls out—when, of course, they’re not reaching through the so-called squirrel-proof cage to pick seeds out. These marketers need to learn how to say resistant instead of proof…and I’m not sure “resistant” is even accurate. Might be smart to make the cage deeper so the seed tube is out of reach too.
To be fair, I had a tray out all winter where I was feeding peanuts to whatever showed up. My visitors, furry and feathered, were making a mess of the deck, so I moved to a mesh tube peanut feeder and hung that in the tree. This is the result after a week:
So I wired the poor thing back together as best I could, then added a squirrel baffle on top of it. And this is the result after the following week:
I’m not sure what will stop these evil geniuses at this point. This was my next attempt, and it took him less than an hour to hang upside down on it and eat (at this point, it’s something of an experiment and academic curiosity, to see if anyone has made a feeder that ruins a squirrel’s thievery):
My brother has wire shepherd’s hooks on which he hangs his feeders, and he hangs a Slinky around the pole, the idea being the little buggers can’t climb the pole because the Slinky startles them and/or ruins their chances at getting a purchase. They just fall back off. FYI, you can get a “Squirrel Slinky”—made by Slinky—for $18 on Amazon, or you can just get three of the original aluminum toy ones for about $11 total. Same difference. Marketers. SMH.
I have one last attempt on order from Amazon. Stay tuned to see if I succeed! (P.S. I’m starting to admire squirrel ingenuity. If you are, too, give a look at
Mark Rober’s Backyard Squirrel Maze.)
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