Mickey & Me

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.