The Thing about Squirrels

          I added a new birdfeeder to the “back four”  today. It is a hanging tray, or a plastic screen framed with cedar and suspended from three slender black chains. It has a plastic dish to use as a bird bath, but I know the squirrels (Marauding  Munchers, etc. hereafter). The bastards will eat molded plastic. Like dessert. Anyhoo… taking the new feeder out of the plastic wrap was a magic moment. The smell of cedar is so nice - like bedding for guinea pigs or hamsters! It took a bit of ingenuity to hang the feeder from a fork-bottomed pipe that used to be topped by  a bird house. I bent a heavy wire plant stake, the one we used to try to support sunflowers with (obsolete because the Nut Mob always ate the flower head off right before the seeds were ripe). The result is a slightly bouncy tray hanging far enough from the fence and the tree branches to thwart  the Twitch Tails.

          I sat quietly to observe from my couch on our screened porch, but  I began to feel the coolness of the air and went inside to brew a pot of coffee. When I looked up, I had missed the first bird to visit the new feeder. I had hoped a chickadee or cardinal would inaugurate the tray, but a sparrow got there first. Damn. On my third sip of coffee, the first of the Snack Snaggers was standing by the pole on his fat hind end, his little paws hanging adorably from his furry elbows. His darling little nose was sniffing the air as he examined the pole, the feeder, the wire, the tree. I was not fooled. Soon two of his Socialist comrades (Share the wealth!) were standing tall by his side. They seemed to be outsmarted. Before they could confur, Officer Catface walked through the area on patrol. Everybody else disappeared. I used the break to run upstairs and put on warmer clothes.

          When I returned,  (three minutes later? No more than five!) Team Gray Pelt was munching away on some bird feed. Nuts aplenty, I tell you. Quite smug, they are, and I am still watching to see what nefarious acrobatics their evil geniuses have devised.  I think they might be holding each other up – three squirrels tall. They are thieves with fleas and nasty nibbling teeth. If chased up a tree, one will turn around and hang down the trunk from his back feet. He will proceed to chatter hellish threats and brutal evaluations of human beings right in your face. Stinking  squirrels. That is the thing about squirrels. They are evil vermin disguised as warm and fuzzy tree friends. Be wise; be wary. They outnumber us, and they are fast. Hide the nuts.