 |
| This morning's sunrise. |
This past week has been interesting to say the least. Competition for bird food has increased
exponentially over the last couple of weeks.
The end of the winter is soon arriving, but the animals are struggling
to find plentiful food sources with the added snow cover blanketing the ground. It is not uncommon to find deer, squirrels
and rabbits scurrying about below the bird feeders trying to scavenge the fallen
sunflower seeds as of late. Just last
night before going to bed, I noticed a shadow below the window, and after retrieving
a flashlight, in what seemed like a scary image in the dark had turned into a
possum. He didn’t seem to mind the
light, but later when standing in front of my in-laws glass door, he chose not to
move for my wife and daughter. Only
spits and hisses came from his mouth when Anne and Abby tried to exit to the outdoors. About the same time, my daughter Abby was
trying out her vocal cords at high C, with shrieks that I am afraid might have
awakened the dead in the nearby cemetery.
Instead of scaring the possum away with Abby’s screams, the furry rat
like creature took upon itself to try and out hiss Abby. After the cacophony of screams and hisses
relented, calling it a draw, it concluded with a minute of ritualistic
stare downs, of which the possum later decided to give up and saunter on toward more hospitable
quarters.
 |
| What can I say, Scrat! |
Our squirrels on the other hand are pretty much tame in
their mannerisms, and in most cases amusing, that is, much of the time. Abby and I were talking in the living room
early in the morning on Thursday before anyone was awake, when all of a sudden;
a blur went past the window. We both
looked at each other and started to laugh; Abby and I both realized that it was
another failed attempt by Scrat to hit the tube bird feeder. It had shot low and propelled itself underneath
the feeder at light speed. Abby then
responded, “Super Squirrel flies again!”
We both laughed for sometime after that episode.
 |
| Scrat with Abby's fingerprints on the glass. |
Later that morning I noticed that Scrat was back at the
feeder. This time he was empting it at a record speed. That concerned me since
the birds were not getting access to needed food for this time of
year. The cardinals are now mating and
will soon be starting nests with new families, and they need the extra fat and
nutrients found in the sunflower seeds.
I asked Abby if she would be dutiful and scare Scrat away for me. She readily responded with enthusiasm running
up to the window, waving her arms and laughing as she tapped the glass. This scared Scrat away for the first two times,
but after that, it would take opening the window to make it jump off the feeder. Scrat was not to be deterred; he started to
ignore Abby even when she cranked the window open all the way. At that point, I was getting concerned that
Abby’s close proximity to Scrat was placing her in danger of being bitten. I then quietly asked her to step back while I
slowly cranked the window open until it hit the feeder. That finally made Scrat jump down, all be it
reluctantly.
 |
| Anne spotted a visitor to our meadow today, a Pileated Woodpecker. |
I knew that it would be a bigger problem if I did not do
something about it soon. I then asked Abby to
not worry about the squirrels on the feeder.
“I will take care of it Sweetheart, you can go play now.” “Ok daddy!”
Off she went to play with her dolls while I brainstormed what I was
going to do next. After many minutes of
deep thought, I came up with what I thought was a good plan; I was going to discourage Scrat
once and for all. I next went to the
refrigerator to get some of Anne’s lemon juice. I couldn't find the juice, but I found the next best thing, lime juice. I continued with my plan by sprinkling
the juice on the cupped base of the tube feeder where Scrat sat while gorging on the seeds. I thought this would make for a bitter licking on its furry bottom when Scrat groomed itself later.
The thought went through my mind that Scrat would be easy to spot in the near future, that is when seeing a squirrel running around with its thin lips curled around its
teeth, and looking much like a person without dentures.
Thinking of this scene made me laugh.
What then transpired was very unexpected. Scrat came up to the feeder right after
sprinkling on the juice, and quickly sat down, all the while taking plentiful amounts of sunflower seeds. I retrospect, I imagine
he thought that I had put honey down on the feeder like I had done last
week. Scrat having deep respect and I soon discovered, a likeness
for the sweet substance, I could only imagine he thought I was giving him dessert
with his meal.
 |
| (Swinging on by.) Well, not quite a flying squirrel, but close! |
Next what transpired was quite unexpected. As Scrat sat there, a strange look came over his face, one
filled with surprise and consternation.
In his obvious look of bewilderment and confusion, he jumped into the air, and hopped down off
the feeder. Upon reaching the ground, he started to drag his posterior aggressively across the snow at light speed. Upon reaching the silver maple, he climbed the
tall tree with quick dispatch. When
arriving at the very top, he put his lower extremities into the
wind, all the while twitching his tail vigorously back and forth as to air out
a problem of unknown origin. One that
was obviously vexing him to no end. The
whole episode took less than a minute, but I could see that my experiment had
gone the extremely wrong. This was only
confirmed when Anne, upon stepping in from the garage asked, “What is going
on?” She could see Abby and myself
looking out the window, staring up at some unknown location. I explained to her what had just transpired,
and along with my intent in trying to solve the problem of the pilfered bird
feed. I could see that Anne wanted to be
understanding; but she was of course right in being concerned for the poor little squirrel at
the moment. To my relief, Scrat was back
at the feeder the next day without any long-term posterior issues.
