Squirrel Feeder
For years I've been feeding birds with the intention of attracting squirrels. As much complaining as I heard about squirrels eating everyone else's birdseed, I thought it would be trivial. It's not.
I've grown to suspect the landscape surrounding my bird feeder poses some sort of tactical liability for my customers. Nonetheless, years of failure isn't enough to force me to stop, change, or even re-evaluate my obviously flawed plan and a few weeks ago my blind devotion finally paid off.
I've never understood the trouble people have with squirrels. Generally speaking, they're much cuter than birds. They've got awesome tails. If you get more than one they tend to chase one another and do other cute squirrely things. As critter watching goes, I think they're top notch.
Unfortunately, they're still not common visitors. My grandfather used had a pretty sophisticated bird feeding operation going on outside a large second story window. (To put "sophisticated" in the right scale - just past the bird feeding operation was the building that housed his pool, beyond which was the lake he shared with the country club.) When we would visit, there would always be 5-10 squirrels crawling around and playing on the various implements he had set up. I thought it was great, but it's a tough standard to measure against my little front yard feeder.
Maybe I'm better off comparing operations with my father? Yeah right. He lives in the country. Every morning turkeys and deer come to chow down at their house. Seriously. Seeing deer at my parents' house is boring. I've petted a deer there. I had to shoo him away when I was lighting night works on the fourth of July and I was afraid he'd get hurt (true story, ask Julie).
So, with no excuses to be found, I need to bring up my game. I'm seeing about one squirrel a month. We need to do better. Hey, on the bright side, I've got cats now.
The crummy part about feeding the local cats is that they aren't selective the way I want them to be. I seem to recall that cats tend to leave the sparrows alone and eat all the cardinals. Not cool. Maybe if I can get some more squirrels up there, they'll chase away the cats.
I've grown to suspect the landscape surrounding my bird feeder poses some sort of tactical liability for my customers. Nonetheless, years of failure isn't enough to force me to stop, change, or even re-evaluate my obviously flawed plan and a few weeks ago my blind devotion finally paid off.
Behold! The coveted feeder squirrel. The droopy tail makes him look sad.
I've never understood the trouble people have with squirrels. Generally speaking, they're much cuter than birds. They've got awesome tails. If you get more than one they tend to chase one another and do other cute squirrely things. As critter watching goes, I think they're top notch.
Unfortunately, they're still not common visitors. My grandfather used had a pretty sophisticated bird feeding operation going on outside a large second story window. (To put "sophisticated" in the right scale - just past the bird feeding operation was the building that housed his pool, beyond which was the lake he shared with the country club.) When we would visit, there would always be 5-10 squirrels crawling around and playing on the various implements he had set up. I thought it was great, but it's a tough standard to measure against my little front yard feeder.
Maybe I'm better off comparing operations with my father? Yeah right. He lives in the country. Every morning turkeys and deer come to chow down at their house. Seriously. Seeing deer at my parents' house is boring. I've petted a deer there. I had to shoo him away when I was lighting night works on the fourth of July and I was afraid he'd get hurt (true story, ask Julie).
So, with no excuses to be found, I need to bring up my game. I'm seeing about one squirrel a month. We need to do better. Hey, on the bright side, I've got cats now.
Immediately after I took this, Sophie (cat, hiding, you can see her ear) attacked Daisy (dog). Just because.
The crummy part about feeding the local cats is that they aren't selective the way I want them to be. I seem to recall that cats tend to leave the sparrows alone and eat all the cardinals. Not cool. Maybe if I can get some more squirrels up there, they'll chase away the cats.
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