Can you believe it? This morning at
the feeder I had two pair of rose-breasted grosbeaks, a pair of cardinals, a
mess of goldfinches, a crowd of blue jays, (maybe twenty) a Baltimore oriole (I
have never seen one at the feeder before) and an Indigo Bunting (gorgeous; even less likely than the oriole.)
There were also the regulars, of course, chickadees, nuthatches, woodpeckers,
titmice, and four varieties of sparrows. But who expects wild tropical colors
on North American birds? At a feeder, for heaven’s sake!
This spring I spent hours at the
kitchen window with my binoculars and my Sibley, and from this dedication I
have been rewarded by learning how to distinguish those confusing little
sparrows, and by building a relationship with Mickey. Mickey is a large gray squirrel
with too many brains. I bought all the state-of-the-art bird feeders guaranteed
to be squirrel proof and each time a new one arrived Mickey managed to beat the
system. Some times it took him only a day, some times several days, which
allowed me a little time to gloat before being forced to admit defeat, yet
again.
Mickey and three other large grey
squirrels spent the winter in my shed accompanied, I suspect, by a few red
squirrels, invited for their remarkable chewing capacity, and a dozen mice to
scavenge their discards. They chewed a
hole as big as your hand in the facing board of the shed and that became a
revolving door for any number of winter creatures getting in out of the cold. I
wasn’t there but the evidence was plain and the critters were still going in
and out when I returned.
The evidence: sunflower seeds, once
the contents of a small garage can with a locked lid, had been shucked and
liberally scattered throughout the shed, mixed in with the contents of a large
bag of brightly colored legos waiting to go to India. Also well-scattered about
you could see little bits of chewed off pieces from what had been a revolting
looking blue foam polyester pad brought by a visitor conscientiously providing
his own bed substitute. The shells, legos
and blue polyester bits were like snow, everywhere, in the cardboard storage
boxes, behind the stored furniture, all over the floor, the shelves, the
freezer and whatever else one finds in a garden shed used also for storage.
After several days of cleaning out
the shed, and after Mickey figured out how to jump ten feet from the nearest
tree on to the zipline we so cleverly put up to make the feeders inaccessible,
I decided it was him or me. I bought a have-a-heart trap intending to transport
Mickey to Australia (across the Connecticut) and leave him with the other
felons.
I set the trap and put it on the
steps outside. Almost immediately he started checking it out, then darted
inside, licked off the peanut butter, and darted out - the trap door still open.
Foiled again! I checked the trap, realized it wasn’t set right and moved it to
another location where I could keep an eye on it. He came back, circled all
around the trap with the open door and fresh peanut butter inside, tried in
every way to get in except by the open entrance. Several times he returned,
circled by and checked it out, but never went in again.
On the second day a large red squirrel
clambered over the rock wall, spotted the trap or more likely smelled the bait,
darted in, the door came down and I had me a captive rodent. Just not the right
one. I transported the Red Guy to “Australia” and stored the trap in the
cleaned-up shed. I decided life would be less interesting without so worthy an
opponent. Choose your enemies they say, and now I had mine: Tricky Mickey,
enemy of choice.
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