squirrel wars

this past christmas we got a bird feeder with some black oil sunflower seeds.  we hung it from the corner of the house in hot springs.  within a day, all the birds west of the mississippi had found it. at any given time we had 20 birds on the feeder.  every once in a while we would get a squirrel but they soom realized it was easier to sit on the deck and just wait for all the seeds the birds dropped.  

when we moved to jackson, not only did we have a horrendous flea problem but the mosquitos were extremely bad too.  well, that's what dr. said.  for some reason the fleas and the mosquitos did not care about me but we insistent on making dr.'s life miserable.

we were talking to our neighbor one day about about the mosquito problem.  she said whenever she goes outside with her little girl she has to fog the backyard because it is so bad.  she said she had talked to someone else a block away that was having the same problem with the bugs.  they had talked about getting bat houses so that the bats would take care of all the mosquitos.

needless to say after that conversation, i forced dr. to go to ace hardware (supporting our neighborhood stores!) and help me pick out a bird feeder and black oil sunflower seeds.  i figured if i could get birds in our yard, then maybe they would eat the mosquitos on the way to dinner at the bird feeder.  i would try anything!  i am not going to have a bat house as a next door neighbor.  no way!

well, i filled up the bird feeder once and all the sunflower seeds are gone. unfortunately it is not the birds that have eaten them.  i have brought all the squirrels into our yard.  at first i would sit on the deck and throw acorns at them.  then i moved onto ice cubes.  it was fun sneaking up on the squirrels and pelting them with ice cubes.  don't worry i have such bad aim that all my ice cubes hit the deck or grill and just scared the shenanigans out of them.  dr. kept saying i needed some kind of tin thing so the squirrels won't get to the bird feeder .   i didn't know he just meant the tin prevented them from getting up the pole because the tin is slippery.  i thought he meant that they were scared of the shininess.  they jump over to the tree by a fence.  so i went outside and wrapped the fence with aluminum foil.  i know my neighbors were watching, too, because i am sure they could hear ice cubes bouncing off the metal grill.

dr. just laughed at me and wondered what our neighbors thought of us.  it took about 6 hours for the squirrels to tear off the aluminum foil from the wood fence.  they did, however, stop coming around so much and that gave the birds time to eat some of the seed.

(you can see the fence to the right of the picture... unfortunately this is after they tore the foil off so you won't be privildged to see my aluminum foil covered fence)