It was a challenge to hang a bird feed that they couldn’t get at. I did it by building a platform above it that they couldn’t get below.
27 thoughts on “Squirrels”
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It was a challenge to hang a bird feed that they couldn’t get at. I did it by building a platform above it that they couldn’t get below.
Comments are closed.
Squirrels are one (wild) mammal we don’t have in NZ that might be cute and harmless enough not to shoot on sight.
What competes for the same food source over there?
They may be cute but not harmless. In the USA, gray squirrels are an invasive species that displaces our natural chipmunks and other species of squirrel.
Just looked up their diet, and, um, yeah, not just acorns, sounds like they’d be as bad as some other little beasties we’ve got.
People get suckered in by them looking cute but they are just tree rats. I like the native tree rats just fine heh.
I remember watching a show from the BBC a few years back, about squirrels. The story was about a couple species that are all but extinct in one area, but breeding out of control in another area. They were trying to catch and release to get it balanced. But the squirrels got too slick for them in a hurry.
One of the animal ‘experts’ got interested in squirrels after trying to build a squirrel proof ‘bird table’.
He wound up with a 12 or 15 step, squirrel gauntlet. And one of the things he learned was that Squirrel B can and often does learn from simply watching Squirrel A run the gauntlet. I’ve seen other obstacle courses built for them since that, most only served to slow them down.
The most effective remedy I’ve ever seen, was adding 2, 2 gallon, plastic pop corn bowls, to the top and bottom of the hanging bird feeder.
To stop possums playing with the power lines a sheet of aluminum is wrapped around the pole a few feet down from the top, wouldn’t something like that work on a high freestanding table?
My brother did the gauntlet thing, at first to protect the bird feeder.
After a while the point of the exercise (for him) became to make the squirrel do the most ridiculous and outrageous things. It was an amazingly intricate contraption built over a year or two.
When visiting him the first things guests wanted to do (particularly the kids) was to watch his squirrels do the gauntlet. Pipes, levers, tunnels, flaps, high-wires, you name it.
Squirrels are more interesting than birds anyway.
Mine hangs from a beam sticking out from the balcony over the yard, underneath a piece of plywood too large for them to get around. I have to reel it in from the balcony to put food in it. Then I put a platform below it for the seeds to fall on, where the squirrels (and birds) can get at them. At one time we had three squirrels, but lately I’ve only seen one.
One of the things I liked the first time I went to the USA was all the cute squirrels at the parks. They are really smart and active little buggers.
They will bust into your attic given half a chance, and their #1 in your insulation will give you a rodent hemorrhagic fever from a virus related to Ebola.
I’d be more concerned about that, if I had an attic. Or insulation.
What I speak of is hypothetical because I don’t know of anyone getting sick, but rodents, which include those cute monsters, will break into your house and rodents can harbor some nasty illnesses.
Where you live, the threat is real, such as a woman who ran over a dead rodent on her lawn with a mower and this person then contracted pulmonary bubonic plague.
You mean pneumonic plague, not bubonic.
CDC reports about 7 cases of plague in the US each year. Something to be aware of but not something to worry greatly about.
Plague can be carried not only by rodents but also by cats and (to a lesser extent) dogs. A significant percentage of cases in the US are linked to cats. Unless Rand handles squirrels on a regular basis, he is probably in greater danger of contracting plague from his cat (but still not very much danger).
Geez Louise, Yersis Pestis, alright already, airborne because the lady ran over “something” with the power mower. What is this place, Med School?
No attic? Then where do you keep your X?
X being:
– mother-in-law
– depressed wife
– disabled child
– horde of antiques
– One Eyed Willy’s map
– stacks of empty margarine tubs
A lot of us live far enough north and cold that the attic is closed off from the rest of the house and stuffed full of either prickly fiberglas insulation between the rafters or “blown in” loose celulose of even fiberglas. No way to keep those people or items up there.
I like them in parks, and when I see them running around a block or more from my house during my daily walk. I’ve grown to dislike them in the trees in my yard. A few years ago the young ones started teething on my wood fence every spring. I needed to replace about a dozen boards over the last three years. Small expense, but a nuisance. They have gotten into my attic and made messes. I’m preparing to do my first local squirrel harvest in a month or two, with an air-powered projectile dispensing device.
Well, we’ve always had one or two in the yard, consistently, for decades, and they’ve never caused any problems of which I’m aware.
Yeah, no problems for me for a couple of decades, but the population has been increasing the last several years, and the food and territory pressures may be causing them to change habits in my immediate vicinity. I used to enjoy them, but to use an imperfect analogy, a rose bush is a weed in a corn field.
Well, I’m in a very dense area where they don’t have a lot of chance of multiplying. I’m actually glad to see they can survive here. We have coons, too, surprisingly.
Some people consider squirrels as little more than tree rats with good publicity, but I like them. They’re intelligent and often entertaining. Back in the 1980s, there was a two part series from England titled “Daylight Robbery – Portrait of the Gray Squirrel as Thief”. You may be able to find some of that on YouTube. There was one squirrel in New York City that learned how to steal candy from a vending machine. They set up very elaborate and challenging obstacle courses, only to find that the squirrels could master them in a short time. They also learned from one another. As soon as one squirrel learned how to overcome an obstacle, the others also knew how to solve it.
As soon as one squirrel learned how to overcome an obstacle, the others also knew how to solve it.
The squirrels are the first incarnation of the Borg invasion!
😉
This Feeder keeps the squirrels out and provides hours of entertainment.
Squirrels are just rats that don’t shave their tails.
Years ago I stayed in a cabin where the little [expletives] were living in the walls. I found their holes and stopped them with steel wool. They gave up and went elsewhere, and I no longer had to listen to noises in the walls any more. (Best was when I stopped up a hole with momma on the outside and the babies inside. After half an hour of frantic squirrel noises, I unstopped the hole, and she relocated the brood almost immediately.)
I wouldn’t recommend messing with a momma squirrel. Back in Colorado Springs, my wife and I were fixing up our first house getting ready to sell it. A squirrel had built a nest in our patio roof and given birth. When I was trying to paint the roof, she let me know in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t welcome. Squirrels have sharp claws and teeth, and she was snarling very loudly while staring at me. I ended up painting up to about a 5 foot radius from her nest. When I sold the house, I told the new owner that she was welcome to finish the job once the squirrels had moved out.
My wife and I wanted to see the baby squirrel. One day, shortly before we moved, the mother and baby came down to the ground. By this time, the baby was about half the size of the mother. My wife tried to get closer but mamma squirrel wasn’t having any part of it. When my wife retreated, the momma started jumping and spinning as if to proclaim, “I won! I won!”
We have several bird feeders, one of which is an open tray so the squirrels can eat without pestering the birds too much. The other feeders are seed-specific, and the rodents have to work hard to get anything out of them (doesn’t mean they don’t try, though!). I drew the line at the suet feeders–you know the type–green cages with half-inch to one-inch grids. One day I put out a fresh suet block, came out a few hours later to find neat, squirrel-muzzle-length scoops eaten out of EVERY grid square! Darn rodents went through a large block in less than a day. Bought some fine-grid hardware cloth and lined both suet cages with it. Now only the birds get the suet!
Incredible, a thread where saying “squirrel” doesn’t mean that someone is way off-topic.
Many years ago I lived in Calgary. One day I heard a loud bang and the power went out. Investigating, I walked a block away and saw that all the lights on 16th avenue – the TransCanada highway – had gone out in both directions for several blocks. And I saw the culprit, half a smoldering squirrel dangling from a transformer.