What’s eatin’ ya?

Let me ask you readers two questions: First, what is gray and furry, scurries around your yard, delights young children and drives your dog nuts? (Okay, “nuts” is quite a hint.) Second, what has teeth that grow up to 6 inches per year, chews holes in screens and gnaws chunks out of wooden fences, destroys bird feeders and irrigation lines and stopped all trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange in both 1987 and 1994 by eating through power lines? 

 

If you guessed the eastern gray squirrel you were correct, both times.

 

I recently put up our third bird feeder this year. Conniving, bushy-tailed marauders destroyed the first two. I need to replace a whole section of our back porch screen because there was a hole eaten through it and I have reworked a section of drip-line irrigation tubing in my backyard several times because sharp rodent teeth keep turning it into a sprayer. These mice, rats, and especially the gray squirrels, are getting on my last nerve! It may be irrational for a human to wish ill upon a wild animal for doing what comes naturally, but I am starting to have some serious animosity towards these critters.

 

If you have read many of these columns, then you know how I love my bird feeder. We have it suspended over an oak limb right outside the windows in our dining area so we can enjoy the visitors. I initially hung it with a double strand of 40-pound fishing leader. When this fell twice, shattering the second time, I was surprised, but I assumed it was rubbing and chafing against the bark over time. The squirrels did appear very quickly to take advantage of the pile of bird seed, but I failed to give them enough credit. I rehung our second feeder with a 120-pound big game leader. That is some serious line! In a couple of days that feeder, too, lay shattered on the ground. The squirrels were there immediately and gorged themselves for a couple of days on their prize. They almost seemed to be rolling around laughing.

 

I still couldn’t quite believe that these rodents had learned that a feeder several feet below them would fall if they cut a line. I have now gone to a single strand of landscape lighting wire. It is clear from the accompanying photos that this is not wear from the tree bark, but premeditated destruction and theft. Apparently, however, they do not like chewing on the copper core and this feeder remains hanging.

 

There is a host of information online about how to deter squirrels, rats, etc. from most of their evil pursuits. There are traps, sprays, homemade concoctions and physical barriers to deter them from committing the most egregious crimes. But the bottom line is that squirrels are prolific here. And they seek water, food, shelter and places to nest. More often than not, those things are easier found in our world than in theirs.