I have taken up the “hobby” of birdwatching. Not just birdwatching, but bird attracting. I spent ten bucks at Home Despot for a bird feeder. Another five bucks bought the seed.
One more Lincoln bought a PVC pipe to put around my feeder. The idea is that the PVC pipe is too fat for the squirrels to climb up.
I had a slimmer one up the past week and was all proud of myself for keeping the squirrels out of my feeder. Well, my gloating didn’t last long. I was typing in this spot yesterday morning when I looked up to see a squirrel camped out on the feeder. I chased that one away, only to find another one up there ten minutes later. That’s when I bought the extra-fat pipe.
When I first got the feeder, I reasoned that squirrels need to eat just as much as birds do. And they do….but not at the expense of the birds. After I came home yesterday afternoon to find the feeder completely empty, I knew the squirrels were to blame. And the new pipe seems to be working. I watched a squirrel storm off in defeat this morning.
I was still chucking at their misfortune when I found a new visitor to our back porch. It was a baby squirrel, still skinny. He wandered back and forth across the deck railing, watching me through the window. He poked his head into the plants we have on the rail, nibbling at the flowers. Every now and then he’d pick up a piece of pinecone from the rail and chew at it. Then it was back to the flowers.
I could feel the guilt begin to grow. This little guy was clearly starving and I had all this food. How could I deny him the right to eat?
It was then that I remembered the big bag of sunflower seeds in the garage. I picked up a plastic bowl, scooped the sunflower seeds into it, and headed to the back porch. The squirrel didn’t wait to see if I was friendly – he took off. I suppose that his fear comes from my scaring squirrels away for the past two days. I put the bowl on the deck after scattering a few seeds here and there. Now the squirrels have some food, and the bird feeder is still for the birds.
So, am I a sucker? Yeah, probably. I had no problem running off the fat squirrels that hogged the feeder, but this little guy was just too pathetic-looking.
You can’t claim to love nature if you don’t love all of it.
Squirrels included.