Are You Frustrated with Squirrels? Here’s how to keep them out of your bird feeders.
It’s amazing how easy it is for an innocent pasttime to become a full-blown obsession. Maureen (my girlfriend) and I had decided to forego any new pets, having lost three dogs and a cat (all to old age or disease) within a year’s time. Just before Christmas, on a lark, Maureen bought a bag of bird seed at Food Lion and put up the above feeder on a shepherd’s hook on the back deck. After a week it was apparent that no birds had any interest in visiting our cozy Red Roof Inn. Not to be deterred, we thought a better bird feeder and better feed would be an appropriate Christmas present for her son and his fiancée. (Let them try it first, we figured.) That led to a trip to Wild Birds Unlimited, a thirty-minute discovery tour and lesson from the proprietor, a purchase of a Brome Squirrel Buster Feeder, and from there it was a slippery slope down into birds r us vs. squirrel perdition.
If you’re going to do something, it’s better to get it right the first time, we properly thought. From a single feeder and a new bag of seed ($6.99 for 20 pounds at Ace Hardware, on sale), we soon had expanded to five or six feeders, including two suet cages. Not to mention 40 pounds of black oil sunflower seeds ($15.99 at Ace, also on sale).
With the sunflower seeds, we immediately became very popular. With everyone. And life, especially for me, became a Sleuth-like experience, plotting moves and counter-moves against those tiny-brained, agile rodent geniuses whose never-say-die attitude I would greatly admire if they were not pitted against my own tiny-brained non-agile self. Our task would be formidable. Squirrels can jump six, seven feet, or more if they really want to. We were attempting the equivalent of keeping LeBron James out of our yard with a four foot tall fence.
And why didn’t we just buy the standard Squirrel Busters and call it a day? Well, for one thing, looks. The SB’s have a kind of penitentiary feel to them. Barred windows, clanking metal. We almost feel sorry for the seeds inside. (Though to Brome’s credit, their Amazon reviews — my review readings have become positively fetishish — are quite positive.) And after having gutter guards at my old house chewed up by squirrels hindered by them, I just didn’t have enough faith in the things. Also, we like variety. And we definitely needed a variety of schemes to achieve our squirrel-free guaranty.
Our first winning skirmish was to purchase a “red pepper cylinder” at Wild Birds Unlimited. $20 for the large size. (We do go upscale every now and then.) Birds don’t mind the peppers, but squirrels do, and lately we’ve started putting cayenne in the feed that lays at the bottom. Squirrels can easily reach the “Dinner Bell Inn” from the oak tree 18 inches away, just like they used to. Hell, they used to wallow in the feed at the base for up to half an hour. But now… they just don’t feel like it anymore.
The rest of our bird-friendly layout didn’t fare so well. We thought slinkies down the feeder poles would deter our furry foragers. (Go to YouTube and view the Squirrel vs. Slinky videos for the examples our own squirrels no doubt have studied.) And they did for awhile. They’d camp underneath, longingly gazing up at the feeders, but would walk away after studying the slinkies. We were quite encouraged. But after after three days at the most, we’d regularly wake up to see a squirrel had trangressed our impenetrable barrier. (See the top center and right pictures of this article.)
A quick study of our defenses shows how hopeless our pitiful attempts would be.
The squirrels were taking off from the fence post caps and landing five-six feet away on top of the shepherd’s hooks, then were sliding or jumping onto the feeders. (Maureen has sinced repaired Shoney’s, the beat up four-port feeder to the left, using plastic spoons, a Dremel tool, and a glue gun. I’ve done my own refurbishing of the Red Roof Inn with aluminum foil and duct tape.)
Perhaps you noticed those strange coverings on the rail posts. They were a result of my intensive internet search for scents that squirrels eschew. The result was Repelo, my own squirrel-scram elixir made by boiling onions, garlic, cayenne, chili pepper flakes, and dish detergent in a sumptious stew and then cheese-clothing the result into a dollar store spray bottle. I covered the post caps (cut-up t-shirts duct-taped down) with a heavy soaking of Repelo. When I did this twice a day, the squirrels stayed away. It was funny to see their reactions to the stuff. Uh, no thanks, you could see them fulminating in squirrelese.
Victory, I thought. And I was right. For two or three days. (Our experience has show that to be the normal length of the squirrel learning curve.) Once it rained overnight and morning light saw The Revenge of the Rodents. Another time I forgot to spray midday and the Repelo just didn’t have enough staying power to stave off those guys.
So we were off to Round 3 (or was it 4) in our Contra-squirrel bout. This time we went to Lowe’s and bought a ten-foot length of 4" x 4" treated lumber, had it cut in three pieces, added a cheap support system, bought the longest 1/2 inch drill bit we could find, and rummaged around our house for old plywood. Oh yeah, and some Kilz and a quart of white paint. The results are shown in the two pictures below.
Somehow this system has now worked for two weeks. Not a sign of a squirrel taking the “leap of faith.” We pay forward the favor by giving them (and the birds who prefer a “walk through” rather than a perch, like St. Louis, the cardinal and his two wives/mistresses) a mixture of white millet and sunflower seeds on the feeder bases and along the deck boards. We spend/waste at least an hour a day (actually more I’m embarrassed to admit) monitoring the traffic along our strip mall. The binoculars we had stashed away in our garbage of an attic have reappeared and Maureen and, to a lesser extent I, have improved in our photography and photo editing skills.
Except for using the blower for three minutes a day, a twice weekly deck rinse with the hose, and the 20 minutes a day (on average) it takes to restock feeders, it’s all become a manageable routine. Of course, we have to check weather reports — wet food can mold and harm the birds — and we have the seller for fox pee bookmarked (as a postively last resort. All it takes is one very clever and bold squirrel. We know that.) But so far, so good. And we’re happy.
And we still haven’t put out the two hummingbird feeders. That’ll happen next month.
→ February 21 update
Having just returned from a four-day trip, we found all of our feeders intact and untouched. Yee-hah! The only problem was the Red Roof Inn falling twice as I was putting it back up after replenishing it. So it turns out I’m a bigger threat to the feeders than the squirrels are. So my next article will be how to protect your bird feeders from Daniel.
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Daniel’s excuses
Normally Daniel Berenson is supposed to be taking care of Freaky Dude Books, the site he maintains with Dr. Crankenfuss. Also he’s only one story short of finishing Stories Guaranteed to Make You Even Sicker. But he’s been off on this bird adventure and he’s busy watching two Mexican telenovelas a night trying to improve his Spanish and he’s also just started a new semester teaching English to recent immigrants. Actually he has no excuses; that’s just what he’s been doing. He hopes to get the Freaky Dude Books back on track soon if for no other reason than to keep Dr. Crankenfuss off his back.
Please follow me if you wish. I’d like that. I’ll be back with more articles soon. My mind is a fertile if unsanitary place, and the home of many suspect colonies of growth.
