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Alive & KickingSquirrels |
I’m at war with those fluffy-tailed rats! Not that I don’t like squirrels, I do; but my seventeen or so bird species that visit me daily have not made their peace with mammals. Mammals have teeth!
My birds would rather fly than fight and besides, birds’ teeth vanished many eons ago. I’m in a stew because these squirrels waste pounds of bird seed in one sitting. They can empty a tube of seed in twenty minutes as they sort through the mix for sunflower seeds.
The squirrels in question are really fun creatures and I am plagued by three kinds. Chipmunks are my favorite; pine squirrels—they are nice, too, but those large gray squirrels are not indigenous where I live; they play king of the feeder and don’t belong here.
In most cases, when they arrive in an area, the native squirrels and chipmunks disappear.
At first, I set out to keep the large grays out! I cut a maple limb closest to the feeder and clad the 4x4 post with a 14-inch section of new, slippery sheet metal.
Voilà, the next a.m. there was Mr. Gray, full of sunflower meats, with a big, bulging smile—ready for lunch. I routed him with a sharp hand clap as I charged the feeder.
I saw the offending limb. It was a jump I didn’t think he could make, but I tied it back with some mason’s line to enlarge the gap, and waited for action.
I saw Mr. Gray calculate the chasm and launch himself sideways off the limb. He came up short and did a head plant into the 4x4 post. Was he mad!!
He had run into a steep learning curve and he expressed himself in words I can’t repeat in print, punctuated by the switch of his tail, back and forth, back and forth!
His calculations for his launching thrust were off because, in part, the limb went sideways. I gained a small bit of satisfaction.
Well, the limbs were removed; I thought I had him in the zoo. He then proved to me that with a running start he could vertically clear the slick metal sheet covering the 4x4 and was back eating sunflower seeds.
I was once more outsmarted.
Removing the bird feeder, I placed a 12-inch diameter circle of wood under the feeder and then fastened an 11” diameter metal stove pipe section below (see photo).
With no gap between the wood platform and the stove pipe, I finally won!
The trouble was, the chipmunk family could not get fed and I could see that Mom Chipmunk was in a family way. IDEA! If I lowered the metal chimney about 1-1/4 inch, the munk family would be able to climb the 4x4 and slip through the gap I created—but Mr. Gray would be excluded.
Or so I thought.
Too much gap! Mr. Gray was back on schedule!
I narrowed the gap so that only the chipmunks and pine squirrel could get through, but now the pine squirrel wasted the seeds and scared the birds just like Mr. Gray!
The solution seemed simple … I would just narrow that gap to 11/16 of an inch. Now, the munks would be top mammals on the feeder.
But the best-laid schemes of mice and men go oft awry, Burns said: just when I thought the problem was solved, the pine squirrels chewed the platform, enlarging the gap and were cleverly back in control with their own private entrance.
You’ve heard about dumb animals? Don’t believe it!
A human brain cannot compete with a squirrel’s brain when it comes to sunflower seeds in a squirrel’s world, cutting edge technology or not.
It’s back to the drawing board.
Guest columnist John Cooke taught high school biology for 30 years and is pleased to share his insights with our readers.