Squirrely

We got a couple bird feeders last spring and set them up outside the dining room window so the boys could watch the birds, and it’s been a lot of fun. But not long after we got the bird feeders, a squirrel started climbing the little pole and hanging from it’s toes to eat the seed. It was actually quite fun to watch the squirrel, but he ate the bird seed so quickly that we couldn’t really afford to continue to refill it for him. So we went to Home Depot and got a big round metal piece to hook onto the pole so squirrels can’t climb up. It worked, and he didn’t come back.

Then over the last few weeks we’ve had another pesky squirrel (don’t know if it was a different squirrel, or if the same one from last time just got smarter). This one would climb into the bush at the corner of the house and then jump several feet through the air, touching off of the face of the window with his feet mid-air and landing on the bird feeders. We let Brax run out there when we’d see the squirrel, but he’d come back a day or too later. We enjoy seeing all the different kinds of birds in the winter time, and still cannot afford to keep a squirrel well-fed, so I borrowed a live trap (the kind that doesn’t hurt the animal) from a neighbor to see if we could catch the squirrel. I put peanut butter in it and set the trap on the picnic table near the bird feeders, but when several days passed I thought it wasn’t going to work. Then we came home last week from playgroup and found the squirrel in the trap. We moved him into the garage to wait until that night when we were planning to go out to Palmyra and thought we’d drop him off in the woods there.

Although Michael agreed that the squirrel was really quite cute, I couldn’t convince him that we should keep it for a pet (yeah, right).  I was told that squirrels, when trapped and relocated, could come back when released up to 55 miles away, and Palmyra is much closer to our house than that.   So I was thinking about how to “mark” the squirrel so if another squirrel started bothering our bird feeders then we’d know if it was the same one or not.  Michael just laughed at my idea of putting a spot of paint on the squirrel’s tail to mark him.  (I did like my dad’s idea: He said to tie a little note to the squirrel’s leg that said “I’ve been a bad, bad squirrel.”)  But we ended up taking the squirrel, unmarked, and releasing him in Palmyra that night.  It’s been almost a week and no squirrel, so I’m crossing my fingers that “squirrely” has found a nice home in the woods with lots of nuts and berries to eat (and not feasting on the bird feeders of all the residents of Palmyra).