Squirrel-Proof

Have you ever bought a guaranteed squirrel-proof bird feeder? How long did it take the squirrels to hack it? When I was a kid we had one on a pole, with a perch surrounding a food tray on a spring. There was a hood over the food, and if anything too heavy sat on the perch, the hood came down and covered the food, so that the marauding squirrel or crow or whatever couldn't get at it. This worked very well for several weeks, and we delighted in watching the squirrels come, get frustrated, and leave again — until one day we looked out the window and saw a perched squirrel, shoveling sunflower seeds with one front paw while holding the hood up with the other. I wish I had a picture.

Last spring Taz took to pulling his feeding tube out at the slightest opportunity. In addition to causing me to skip MASW in favor of tracking down a backup tube over a holiday weekend, this habit had us tearing our hair out all summer as we tried to find some way of keeping him away from the tube, meanwhile going through a lot more replacement tubes than the insurance company thought any human being could possibly need. After much experimenting we finally foiled him with an abdominal binder such as one would normally wear for strained ribs or the like (we call it his corset), covered by a bodysuit, covered by shirt and pants. This worked for a few weeks, but he got around it eventually, so we added four socks on his one usable hand so he couldn't get a purchase on the tube. That did the trick (and just in time, too, as I had been in danger of missing Rhinebeck).

But you know how squirrels are. No matter what clever gizmo you come up with, it takes them only so long to circumvent it, and then you have to upgrade.

Behold my latest gizmo-in-progress:


This mitt (it needs to be at least six inches longer) will go on over the socks, with luck being bulky enough to neutralize his improved dexterity.

We'll see how long it takes him to solve this one.