The Squirrel

Contemporary History #10 – The Squirrel

I think that in Pennsylvania, it is illegal to feed large game animals such as Elk, Deer, Bear, and Wild Turkey. I say “I think” because I’ve just spent an hour googling the question and the responses I got, including the law, itself, seemed ambiguous. I got information that said a ban has been proposed (nothing said if it was accepted), or that you can’t feed animals with the intent to shoot them (so what if you don’t want to shoot them?).  Some of the information I’ve seen says you can’t feed ANY wildlife. Except wild birds. That was the one clear piece of information I found. You can feed wild birds but I get the impression the Game Commission folks scowl upon even that.

As an aside, by the way, Wild Turkeys are wild birds. I’m just saying.

I like feeding birds: Cardinals, Goldfinches, Chickadees, Nuthatches, Titmouse, Purple Finch, Downey Woodpeckers, Red-bellied Woodpeckers, those screechy Blue Jays, even the House Sparrows and House Finch that sit and eat for hours are welcome. Heck, I may not enjoy them most of the time, but even the Starlings are sometimes fun to watch, especially when they get after each other over a snippet of suet, only to lose it in the end to a woodpecker.

I don’t feed the birds because I think they’ll starve without my few handfuls of seeds to get them through till tomorrow. Nope, my reason for feeding them is far more self-serving and selfish. I enjoy seeing them. That’s it. Totally.

 

 I don’t know why the Red-Bellied Woodpecker is called that. As far as I’m concerned, the head is redder than the belly!

Even I have to laugh at myself when I get all excited over seeing some bird I’d not seen before come to visit my feeder: a Rose-Breasted Nuthatch or a Chipping Sparrow, or what I think was a House Wren!

I don’t feed anything else, other animals, that is. Well, that’s not the goal anyway. I think a chipmunk took up residence below my feeder to grab seeds that fell his way. A number of years ago, when the feeder still belonged to my mom, we saw a hawk take a sparrow. However, my intent is to just feed the birds some seeds and suet. That is the goal and I do all I can think of to achieve that goal (of feeding only the birds).

This past March I found a large, empty bag in my yard that looked like one of my 40lb. sunflower seed bags. As I recall, it said “Wildlife Food” or some such thing on it. I thought that was an odd thing to have blowing across my yard so I put my trash in it and gave it to Mr. Cunfer, our trash man. Then I found another one out in the area I call my “park”.

Dad had an apple orchard at one time beside the house. I’ve allowed it to return to a more natural state but I keep a path cut through it for exercise and nature observation. These are two photos of the path. You have to look very closely to see it, but in the photo on the left there is a blue and white Pepsi bottle. I guess I'm not the only one to enjoy my park!

An invasive rose-like plant that I think is Rosa rugosa seems to be trying to overtake my property. When the plant blooms in the spring it does produce a lovely aroma. That seems to be its only redeeming quality.

Some of it grows along Butler Drive which runs beside by my park. If it would just grow only there, I’d welcome more of it as it makes a pretty good fence. But it doesn’t just grow there. It wants to grow everywhere; everywhere creating great clumps of thorny strangles. It was deep within one of those thorny strangles that I saw another of these bags, again empty. I left it there. I wasn’t about to fight the rugosa thorns to get it out!

Anyway, it appears someone was feeding the deer, on my property. I know it wasn’t me! I’d like whoever it is to stop, at least on my property. I can see it now, the Game Commission Ranger at my door with a summons. “But officer, it wasn’t me!” I’d be yelling as they drag me off to Game Commission Prison or whatever they do with wildlife-feeding scofflaws.

Actually, there is one other animal I apparently feed. I stress this is not my goal. My goal, once again, to be sure we are very clear, is to feed the birds. I do all I can to not stray from this goal. However, I know my goal is about to be over-ridden when I’m working at the computer, or watching TV, or reading, and I suddenly hear a “thump” on my roof.

Beside our house is a Norway Maple. My mom planted it in the 1990’s. I’d have chosen a Red Maple for the vibrant Autumn Leaves but she apparently liked the purple leaves of the Norway Maple year 'round. 

I understand that now we consider this tree to be as invasive as that d__n R. rugosa monster but when she planted it, she bought it from a local nursery; they were selling it for its ornamental quality. The squirrel climbs this tree and then jumps across to my roof (that’s the thump). If I listen closely enough, I can then hear the pit-pat of his little paws as he runs across the roof. If I get to the kitchen in time, where the feeder is hanging outside the window, I can catch the moment when he then hops from the roof onto the post the feeder hangs from and climbs down onto the feeder to begin his meal.

Bird feeders aren’t made for a creature of his size. So, he does struggle some to stay on the feeder, finding all sorts of acrobatic ways to get to the feeder and at the seeds.

The feeder in the video is the feeder I had in 2017 when I first moved back to Drums. It actually was the feeder my mom had hung (well, I had hung it for my mom). That lasted until spring when the squirrel decided to cut through all the acrobatics and just go for broke. He chewed through the nylon cord I had hung the feeder with causing the thing to fall to the ground, causing the thing to break into a number of pieces. Somewhere deep within the darker corners of my heart, I’m sorry to report, I secretly hoped he got hurt when the thing fell; not badly, but just enough to learn a lesson.

My first-ever feeder was a metal mesh feeder I got when we moved to Ashland, MA in 1984. When we bought a house in Grafton, MA in 1988, I made a wooden feeder and bolted it to the house outside one of the windows. In the following photo, this feeder can be seen. It had two shelves where seeds could be poured. Lots of birds like feeders like this, especially larger birds like the Blue Jays. There are no perches to balance on. Just fly in, grab a seed, and go.

Of course, as can be seen in the photo, squirrels liked it too, for that very same reason! Except they don’t grab and go, they sit and eat. Our first cat, Max, can also be seen in the photo. She would sit and watch the squirrel and the squirrel would keep an eye on her. Oh, how she would have LOVED it if I would have just opened that window…  She watched the birds come as well. When they came, she would sort of chortle deep in her throat until the birds flew away. Eventually, she’d grow tired of the show and go curl up for a nap.

Our next move took us to Maine. Our apartment there didn’t really have a good place for a feeder so I left the wooden one behind for the new owners to enjoy (or remove!). 

Our next move came in 1999 to Virginia. For that location I bought a nice plastic feeder made by Rubbermade. I’d forgotten about the metal mesh one!

The Rubbermade Feeder was a great feeder! I liked it so much that I kept it even though we didn’t have a place to hang a feeder when we lived in Maryland. When I headed back to Maine in 2015, I took that Rubbermade Feeder with me and hung it out on the little deck of my second-floor apartment.

In the video we see a Nuthatch and a few Chickadees. Situated where this feeder was, on a second-floor deck, it was never visited by a squirrel the entire two years I was there.This video was taken during the first, wait, maybe it was the second, blizzard Maine experienced in 2017. 

Yes, Maine was hit twice that year; the first one hit on February 13 and the second one hit a month later, on March 14. A bit more research tells me the video and these two "snowy" photos were taken during the February storm. By the time we got to number two, the March storm, the feeling was, “Who cares? Here we go again!” So photos were not made.

I liked this Rubbermade feeder so much I brought it back to Drums with me in September 2017, even though I knew Mom’s feeder was still hanging where I’d hung it for her. 

Yes, we get snow in Drums, too!

When Mom’s feeder crashed to the ground, I remembered that Rubbermade feeder and, using a heavy gauge wire, hung it in the same place.

The Rubbermade feeder had a door in the roof that you used to refill the feeder. Squirrels are problem solvers. After some months of figuring, the squirrel solved the problem of how to open that door. So, using more of that wire, I wired shut the door. This frustrated the squirrel no end. The photo to the right is the Rubbermade Feeder before the squirrel figured out how to open the door (which, by the way, he is sitting on in this photo. Shhh Don’t tell him) The feeder seen being visited by the Goldfinches in the earlier photo above is also this Rubbermade Feeder, but AFTER I wired the door shut. The wire holding the door shut can be seen in that photo.

Unable to open the door any longer, the squirrel went back to balancing himself in various positions on the feeder such that he could enjoy all of the seeds he cared to enjoy, which he would do for hours on end, emptying the feeder in very short order.

Susan Kalada, owner of the “The Bird’s Nest Shoppe and More”, a boutique that sells all things bird feeding and more located in the former Drums Post Office building on North Old Turnpike Road, told me about a feed she had that was laced with cayenne pepper. Apparently, the pepper does not bother the birds but it plays havoc with mammal tongues and throats. Instead of buying her seeds, I bought some cayenne pepper powder instead and laced my own seeds.

That did the trick - somewhat. The squirrel began to chow down on those seeds until the pepper began to have its effect. The squirrel jumped back, rubbed its paws over its face a number of times, jumped up onto the post and rubbed its face on the post some, then jumped up onto the roof and back to the Norway Maple. However, he didn't give up. He came back only to repeat this procedure. If the burn was bad enough, he sometimes just jumped to the ground and ran away.

I actually felt sorry for the little fellow.

I did not stop using the pepper, however. I didn’t feel THAT sorry!

I had a friend in Maine who loved a local Chinese Restaurant’s “Hot and Spicy Soup” which she’d order extra spicy; the greater the burn, the better. She’d take me to lunch there and order this soup for herself, extra spicy. There she’d sit, tears streaming down her face, as she moved spoonful after spoonful of this soup into her mouth, all the while exclaiming how good it was; all the while with tears continuing to flow copiously down her cheeks! I mention that because that’s how it got with the squirrel. He’d sit there and eat and eat until it appeared that he just couldn’t stand the burn any longer, at which point he’d run away. He still didn’t like having to balance either so he continued to seek ways to get in from above, too. If only that wire wasn’t there…

I began to see chew marks in the feeder’s roof.

I began to wonder if I should be scared to sleep in the house at night.

One day I came out to the kitchen to find the squirrel balanced on the feeder biting off bits of the roof. Not eating seeds, mind you, nipping off bits of the roof overhang. This activity continued for a week or so, each nip bringing him closer to the reservoir of seeds. The nips became a notch in the roof. At first I thought he was just making it easier for himself to sit on the feeder as the notch perfectly fit his back. But he kept nipping and the notch continued to grow. Eventually, it passed the wall of the reservoir and became a hole in the roof. The hole grew larger, too.

This pleased the Blue Jays because they were almost too large for the feeder as well but just right for grabbing seeds through this hole in the roof. The House Sparrows, who like to sit for hours and just consume seeds, liked it too. One day I found that a sparrow was now INSIDE the feeder, happily sitting and eating.

That must have given the squirrel the idea. He kept nipping, the hole continued to grow larger, until one day I came out to find the SQUIRREL now INSIDE the feeder. Of course, he still had to maneuver around the pepper so there were still frequent occasions of his hustling out and running away, only to have him return again the next day and each time, staying longer.

Finally, the birds stopped coming. Who can eat with a squirrel in your face, or beak, as the case may be? So, I waited (what else was there to do?) until the squirrel finished off the rest of the seeds that remained in the feeder, leaving behind just empty shells – and cayenne pepper.

Once the squirrel, too, stopped coming (meaning the seeds had all been consumed), I took down the Rubbermade feeder. Here it is.

Oh look! There to the right you can still see some of the Cayenne Pepper! Also, if you look closely at the roof, on the sixth row of “shingles” in from the left, you can see a few of the first chew marks in the roof.

Where is the hole, you ask?  Let me turn the feeder around for you so you can see the other side. That’s the side with the hole; and the door, too. 

Since I now once again needed a new feeder, I began looking into what feeders were available in the area to be purchased. Then I remembered the old metal mesh feeder still stored in the basement, I replaced the Rubbermade with the mesh!

I apologize for the blurry spot on the feeder. I took this through the kitchen window and was unable to clean the window prior to taking the photo. I couldn’t get a photo from outside either for the same reason, which is that there is a wonderful, great big spider’s web right below the feeder, just out of this picture, and I didn’t want to disturb her (the spider's) work. I saw she did have a grasshopper recently caught in her web so she will eat well this weekend.

Nothing has returned yet to feed at the feeder. It will take a bit of time for the birds to realize there are seeds here again. Same thing for the squirrel. When they do, the birds will find lots of seeds and the squirrel will find that he will have to re-learn all those acrobatic moves again if he wants to steal more seeds. He may even be so heavy (probably from eating all those seeds previously!) that he breaks the chain and brings the mesh feeder down. But that’s OK. This one won’t break.

One more thing for sure, he ain’t chewing a hole in THIS feeder!