Direction Connection

Well, in addition to Rebecca’s recent gardening craze, we’ve also gotten quite into birdfeeders lately. There’s this local feed and seed, which has pet food and gardening stuff, as well as lots of birdfeeders, birdseed, and suet. So we got a birdfeeder. And a suet cage. The birds loved the feeder, which we installed by hanging it from a tree using a bungee cord, to discourage the squirrels. The squirrels were delayed, but not deterred. They loved the birdseed–and the suet–they weren’t particularly picky. So Rebecca bought a thistle feeder (really small seed that the squirrels either aren’t interested in or can’t get to because the holes on the feeder are so small they only accommodate beak). She also bought a feeder that suction cups to our window, which she thought would keep the squirrels away because there’s no way they can climb to it.

I was really disappointed that the first feeder had become the Squirrel’s (I’m convinced there’s only one, very evil, squirrel, but Rebecca insists that there are multiple squirrels) domain. So I began googling, and googling, and googling. And I found-a-ha!-the perfect solution! Add cayenne pepper to the birdseed, and the squirrels will stay away (apparently, the birds don’t notice it). So we did. And Rebecca was lucky enough actually to see the Squirrel discover the cayenne pepper. She said it immediately dropped to the ground and began rubbing its face into the grass while she laughed sadistically–I mean, hysterically.

Satisfied that we finally had the squirrels outsmarted, we left for a weekend getaway (more on that later). When we returned, we found the first birdfeeder (the one to which we’d added the cayenne pepper) lying on the ground. The Squirrel had actually gnawed through the cord it hung from (which was connected to the bungee cord)! I now refer to this particular incident as the Revenge of the Squirrel. We haven’t yet fixed it. We think we need to get a small chain, or perhaps coat a new cord with cayenne pepper?

Who would have thought the Squirrel could be so crafty? Or so acrobatic? It’s crazy watching it practically hang upside down to jump onto the birdfeeders, or head-butt the window birdfeeder so the little trays will pop out of it and spill all over the ground. We have a few choice nicknames for the little…bugger, but they’re not appropriate for our blog.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 27th, 2007 at 3:36 pm and is filed under Day-to-Day Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.