Outsquirrelling the squirrel…

I am so pleased to report that the squirrels have still not figured out a way to get to the birdfeeder I hung up earlier this year.  For a while there, I thought that having a squirrel free birdfeeder was an impossible dream but I am here to tell you that it can be done. 

So without the squirrels eating us out of house and home, we have gotten a nice array of birds back to the feeder and in our yard.  But I have to admit that I bang on the window whenever I see a blue jay on the feeder.  They can wipe the food out almost as quickly as a squirrel can and the other birds don’t seem to want to be in the same neighborhood as they are.

 

Yesterday I put the long lens on my camera and took a few shots of our visitors.  Here they are:

Black-capped Chickadee 

Grackle.  He is the king of all he surveys.  And yes, we still haven't taken down those blasted Christmas lights that don't work.

The American Robin.

The lovely female Cardinal.

Mr. Goldfinch almost has all his summer clothing on.

The Juncos are still here.

The Grudging Respect Awards…

I have to admit to having a grudging respect for squirrels.  They are devilishly cute and fiendishly clever little buggers.  And apparently, they have a lot of power over me.  They drove me so nuts for years cleaning out our bird feeders in spite of state of the art baffles that I gave up in defeat and quit feeding the precious little songbirds that flit around our parts.

 

But the other night while I was sleeping, I had a brainstorm.  I thought of a spot on our front porch where I didn’t think the squirrels could reach.  So far, in the four days the feeder has been up, the squirrels have not figured out how to breech the feeder that’s hanging there.  They sit on the ground underneath and catch the droppings from the birds.  I’m sure this is beneath their squirrelly dignity, but it works for me.  If they haven’t figured it out in another month, I will feel that I have won and they will have to admit to having a grudging respect for me for a change.  But in my imagination, I can see the bunch of them back at their nest with their protractors and compasses out, doing calculus, trigonometry and other high forms of math I never understood.  It’s only a matter of time, I’m sure, and they will have triumphed over me one more time.

The bird feeder is right above this guy.

I also have to admit to having a grudging respect for the sock that stopped my washing machine.  Who knew a sock could do that?  I didn’t.  Our handy-dandy repairman Michael came out in the afternoon, took the front of the machine off and said, “There’s the culprit.”  And he held up a mangled sock. The fact that it was one of my “No Nonsense” socks makes it all the more remarkable and like it was meant to be.  I guess when a No Nonsense sock wants to stop a washer, it just goes ahead and does it in a No Nonsense sort of way.  Well, the good news is that the machine is working and should be with us for another ten years, according to Michael.  The bad news is that I have to go and finish the laundry.

Oh, yeah…and one more thing.  Before you admit to having a grudging respect for us because we were the first people in our neighborhood to have our holiday lights up, just know that we never bothered to take them down and half of them don’t work anyhow.