Squirrel Feeder

My mother loves all things flora and fauna. She’s also a very thoughtful lady. When she visited a few weeks ago she saw firsthand our lack of her favorite things. If you mention liking anything plant or bird- related (even if you also explain that you have no place for it in your NYC-sized apartment sans outdoor space), you can expect a box of whatever you admired to show up at your door. A big box.

After all the trouble she goes through, enthusiastically packing up little plants, soil, moss, or perhaps even a bird feeder with a bag of seed, we hate to let her effort be for nothing. So last week we cluelessly “planted” and arranged plants on the radiator under our kitchen window where they can get lots of light (then dry up and die when the heat gets turned on) and installed the bird feeder on the fire escape outside the window where we could admire the birds (or not, as it turned out).

Sunday afternoon, while running some errands after church, I received a voicemail from our landlord. She said that some of the bird seed had fallen onto their deck below and that we’d have to take it down. Although we’re technically not supposed to have anything on the fire escape, she seemed pretty calm so I didn’t think it was a big deal.

When we finally got home and I looked outside at the bird feeder, I thought that our landlord must have already come upstairs and emptied it because there was barely any seed left. Nope. It turns out, what we’re assuming was a squirrel, jumped onto our feeder, sending about four cups of bird seed onto their deck. This may not seem like big deal either, but any seed left on the ground will attract mice and we don’t want those.

On the phone she definitely under-stressed just how much of a mess was made. By the time we got home they had swept and washed away most of it. I know it was a pain in the a$$. We still offered to come down and clean up their deck then made sure to get every last little seed off the fire escape. They said not to worry and that, “our hearts were in the right place.” I would say I would give feeding the birds another go with something squirrel proof but let’s be real, squirrel proofing is a misnomer. When on a mission, there is no stopping a squirrel. That squirrel was a brazen and cunning thief, singularly focused on gorging itself on our bird seed.

Monday morning while walking Pup I noticed a squirrel in the tree outside our apartment. It looked pretty guilty so I gave it the stink eye and pointed it out to Pup so she could bark and chase it away. Sure, squirrels can be a lot of fun to watch but I’m starting to see them through Pup’s eyes, as evil tree rats. 

Maybe I'll get my revenge with one of these... so funny!