Sunday, March 4, 2012

Neighborhood Thief



This little critter may look cute and harmless, but don't be taken in by his innocent appearance. He's a thief at heart, a bad guy twice over who shows no signs of remorse for his past misdeeds. Oh no, instead he's back casing the grounds daily looking for new opportunities.

I used to scare him with a toy squirt gun, chase him out of the nearby vine maple in the courtyard, away from that tempting suet feeder. It was a hopeless effort of course, but he did learn to scamper away when he saw me move toward the door. Then one day he boldly stole the whole suet block, metal cage and all. No, I didn't catch him in the act, but he was the most likely culprit. The flickers and downy woodpeckers were certainly not suspects.


Sigh. I walked to the Seward Park Audubon Center and invested way too much money in a large seed feeder that was advertised as "squirrel proof". Imagine that, just the thing to confound my pesky squirrel. I gleefully hung the new feeder on the same branch in the same tree as the missing suet feeder. Gotcha, Mr. Squirrel.

Sigh. Now that feeder is gone too. I'm left with a 10-pound bag of birdseed and no feeder to put it in. Damned cheeky rodent! I do have to admire his go-gettum attitude... just a little. Be on the lookout in your neighborhood, I'm encouraging him to move on.

  

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