The Invasion of the Bird Feeder Snatchers

By Ed Raymond
Staff Writer
It’s been about 65 years since I had squirrel stew. Our farm neighbors had about 40 acres of woods, primarily oak, which proved to be the Hamptons, Malibu, Minnetonka, Miami Beach, and Jackson Hole for these small rodents.

The woods were loaded with surplus acorns and large hollow trees. Actually squirrels have one of the best diets in the world so their meat is flavorful and very nutritious. Squirrel stew smothered in stock gravy with potatoes on the side. Nothing better. They regularly dine on nuts, fruit, apples, bananas, plant buds, birds’ eggs, tiny birds, mushrooms, and will also have their veggies–-carrots, celery, green beans, romaine lettuce–if you take the trouble to provide them. If hungry they will also eat insects and mealworms. People eat worse.

Squirrels’ teeth grow constantly throughout their lifetime so they need to chew on tough bark and acorns to keep them trimmed. They can live to be ten years old unless they run across an irate bird feeder like myself.

A cousin and I went hunting when we wanted some stew, one with a .22 and one with a .410. A good head shot saved a lot of meat because grey squirrels weigh between 12 to 28 ounces and have a classy fur coat. One of my best memories is the day my cousin took a 10-gauge double-barreled shotgun to the woods with us. Spotting a squirrel right above us, he aimed and pulled the trigger. Except he pulled both triggers at the same time. The recoil drove him into ground an inch or two–as the squirrel floated down from the sky in many parts.

Some say squirrels make good pets, are extremely affectionate, and will come when called. But what kind of cage would keep them from wrecking everything around them? We once had a squirrel come down a fireplace chimney in Parkfairfax, Virginia where we lived and it did a job on the drapes in a struggle to find an exit.
My Love-Hate Relationship With Squirrels Today
Since retirement I have turned into a bird feeder who buys sunflowers by the 50-pound bag, suet by the ten-pound bag, and other bird delicacies such as oranges and various hummingbird mixes.

Our birds range from bald eagles to hummingbirds, with ravens, a dozen kinds of woodpeckers and sapsuckers, rare cardinals and their mates, yellow and rose finches, and hundreds of other types that are simply fly-by-nights.

We have a family of pileated woodpeckers that have nested in a hollow oak tree on our back lake lot for years. The adults are about 22 inches tall and love suet. It’s the only reason they hang around. If they are searching for a bug in the bark of a hollow tree you can hear their pounding for miles. They can really make the chips fly. We have a cedar log home which they attack occasionally. One learns to put up with it.

Over my bird feeding years I have gradually lowered my temperature regarding squirrels and their almost hourly attacks on my many types of bird feeders. Over the years I have purchased a number of “squirrel-proof” bird feeders.  I have strung bird feeders on very thin cables and raised them to record heights among the trees. We have always had a couple of dogs around to scare the hell out of squirrels when they leave the front door.

Squirrels only change expression through their tails. Their faces remain guileless and innocent but their tails send many messages around their neighborhood. So far my squirrel-proofs are rusting in the back of my shop or are patched together with baling wire or screens to make them usable. Don’t fall for the ads.
Have You Ever Seen a Squirrel in the Middle of the Road Smacked by a Truck?
We have had two dogs chasing squirrels off of our bird feeders for 15 years–daily in the summertime–and in all that time I have never seen them even get close to nailing one. A couple of years ago they dragged a dead one up on our steps but I suspect they got it when it left a squirrel hospice in a moment of dementia.

Recently there was a story out of Scotland about a brewery named BrewDog selling the “strongest, most expensive and shocking beer in the world.” A bottle costs $765, is 55 percent alcohol and each of 12 bottles were encased in bottles encased in the bodies of small animals prepared by a taxidermist. The owner of BrewDog claimed that the four squirrels, seven weasels, and a rabbit used to cover the bottles were all roadkill.

We have lots of squirrels at our place. One morning I counted 16 just in the trees. I have never seen a roadkilled squirrel around here. Corky and I have traveled several hundred thousand miles in motorhomes through national and state parks and millions of square miles of forests through Canada and Alaska and have never seen a squirrel pancaked by a car or truck. We have seen a lot of roadkill–deer, chipmunks, gophers, raccoons, badgers, skunks, muskrats, turtles, geese, turkeys, and once even a bear–but nary a squirrel. I think they are too athletic and too smart to get nailed by a mere vehicle.

By the way, BrewDog has sold out its special to connoisseurs in the U.S., Canada, Italy, Denmark, Scotland, and England. This was a Belgian ale, brewed because the company “wanted to challenge people’s perceptions about how beer can be packaged; taxidermy helps open people’s eyes to the fact that beer doesn’t have to made by a multi-national corporation.”
That’s OK, but I’d like to know the truth about where they got the squirrels.
The Cirque de Soleil Acrobats Have Nothing on My Squirrels
I don’t think our grey squirrels are exceptional athletes, even if they are extremely well fed. I do think squirrels are the most athletic of all the animals. I have seen ours leap from tree to tree 50 feet above the ground, spanning distances of 15 feet or more. I have chased squirrels from bird feeders 12 feet above the ground. They hit the ground running at full speed. I have watched them bedazzle our dogs a thousand times over with their broken field running and off-tackle slants. I have watched them do their famous high-wire act, balancing on a 1/8 inch cable for many feet, 15 feet above the ground in order to reach a loaded bird feeder.

Researchers say squirrels can leap a span ten times the length of their body, double what a human body can do. Their ankles are unique in the animal world. They can rotate them 180 degrees, allowing them to grip while climbing no matter which way they are facing. I have watched one of our squirrels tiptoe down a tree headfirst, reach out with one front paw and tip a hummingbird feeder just so he can sip sugar water out of one hole, while spanning a distance of about 15 inches. He’s a real contortionist.
They Wait at the Crosswalk for Humans to Cross the Street
Richard W. Thorington has studied squirrels for years after determining they were more interesting and smarter than polar bears or mountain lions. He has watched squirrels wait for pedestrian signals at crosswalks with humans–and then cross the street with the humans. They generally live in multigenerational clans, are very sociable yet deceiving, chat together most of the time, and after a hard day’s work greet each other with a squirrel’s kiss, a nuzzling with the cheek and lip glands.

There are 278 squirrel species alive today, splitting off from other rodents about 40 million years ago. They are survivors. They are found on all continents except Australia and Antarctica, and even living at 18,000 feet in the Himalayas.

A squirrel’s head is shaped so that he can see above and to both sides of his head. His eyes even have pale yellow lenses so that he can see through the sun’s glare. His tail serves as his thermometer. He can shunt blood to the body core to warm his blood in winter or shunt it to the tail to cool the blood by waving it at everybody.
Squirrels Seem to Have the Minds of Investment Bankers and Ponzi Schemers

Squirrels not only have extra sharp vision to avoid roadkills, they can keep an eye on predators. They are very opportunistic feeders, if hungry will dispose of kitchen scraps or swipe a hamburger left on a picnic table for a moment. If really hungry they eat insects such as crickets or baby birds left unattended in nests.

We have lots of oak trees so we can predict about how severe the winter is going to be by how aggressive squirrels are in hoarding acorns and other nuts. In storing acorns and nuts they exhibit a remarkable ability to determine what nuts are in danger of germinating. They excise the tree embryos with their sharp teeth and then bury them or hide them in tree hideyholes. In order to protect their food supply they will often dig up acorns buried in the ground and dig another hole for them. They have been observed doing this with one acorn as many as five times.

If squirrels believe they are being watched by other squirrels in this endeavor, sometimes they will fake the burial, hide the nut in the mouth, and then scamper to another area where they cannot be seen.
With A Chuk-Chuk Here And A Ku-Kuk There
Like most animals, squirrels will warn other members of their group about external threats by barking out a series of chuk-chuk-chuks while waving their bushy tails back and forth in a prescribed fashion. They issue a number of different sounds, depending upon the seriousness of the situation. One “kuk” means a warning to be ready for action, a buzzing sounds means that action is necessary, and a short scream means “this is very serious business!”  Squirrels raiding bird feeders will normally keep their tails moving slowly back and forth, indicating to other squirrels that it is necessary to stay on the alert.

It’s fascinating to watch squirrels trying to solve a “squirrel-proof” feeder. They usually crack it in a day or two. They will chew through light metal and heavy plastic to add to their diet. Our squirrels are all fat and sassy from eating many pounds of sunflower seeds. I usually go through about 50 pounds a month and I would guess they get about half of them.
A Good Squirrel Stew Recipe
We not only hunted squirrels for recreation and food, we sold tails to manufacturers of fish spinners who used parts of the tail to cover the treble hooks. We would mail them a dozen to a box and get about 50 cents each for them. That was pretty good money in the 1940s.

I won’t go into details on skinning squirrels except it can get messy at times. We used to cut the squirrel up into pieces and then brown them in bacon grease. After browning we would cover them with water, bring to boil, and then simmer for about one hour. After that we would throw in the potatoes, onions, celery or anything else green, and then make the gravy.  A feast fit for a king, particularly with a huge chunk of cornbread.

Every time I lost a new “squirrel-proof” feeder in the old days I would threaten to turn all of our fat squirrels into stew, but I have lost the revenge factor.  They are superb athletes that should be watched by admirers as the bird watchers view beautiful birds eating at feeders.

From now on I’m going to watch Supersquirrel (It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Super….) bound gracefully from limb to limb and tree to tree. I will remember all of the times our dogs’ jaws dripped with murder in anticipation of catching Supersquirrel and tearing him from limb and limb, always ending in frustration. And I will remember the times he outwitted me about bird feeders.
 
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