BUNGEE SQUIRREL

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18016 Church Road ~ Marengo IL 60152
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BUNGEE SQUIRREL


As anyone knows who has ever had a birdfeeder, squirrels are at the same time the most exasperating and funniest critters out there. They consume bird feed faster than we can put it out and a whole cottage industry has developed around keeping them out of the bird feeders. We have tried them all with little long term success as sooner or later, they break the code. The bungee for squirrels is one of the best gadgets yet. It doesn't keep them out of the feeder but it's fun enough to watch them conquer this challenge to make it worth the corn they eat.



It's hard to believe there is any connection between these two pictures but this guy can actually leap up from the ground to hang onto the corn and eat it.

We started with it just a foot off the ground and after he got the hang of it, we kept raising it a few inches until he lost interest. Sooner or later, he worked it out and it is now about 4 feet off the ground.

One of his buddies has not been able to jump up to the corn but figured out how to take a flying leap from the tree that it hangs on.

What makes it a real trip is that it hangs from a spring and has a bell on it. It nearly reaches the ground when they first land on it, then bounces up and down with the bell ringing.




SUPER SQUIRREL

This week we have another amazing squirrel story to tell. We hung a sunflower seed feeder from a branch of a giant Cottonwood, high enough off the ground that it was impossible for them to jump up to and far enough away from the tree that they could not jump over to it, so we thought.

It took less than a week for one particularly gymnastic squirrel to figure out how to launch himself from the tree to the feeder. It was great entertainment watching him work it all out and finally succeeding after many misses.


The Challenge

We then moved the rope down the branch far enough to make this impossible but it got close enough to a spruce tree to provide a launching platform. The solution was to tie a rope from the feeder to the cottonwood so we could adjust the distance to totally confound him.

Well, then he figured out how to jump from the tree to the rope and then crawl along the bottom of the rope to the feeder. We fixed his clock by replacing the horizontal rope with a light string that he could not land on.

So, here have the perfect squirrel-proof birdfeeder. It is 25 feet up to the branch and 5 feet off the ground and too far from either tree for a squirrel to jump to.







WRONG AGAIN!






New Born Squirrels

I thought I was through with squirrels for awhile but we can't seem to get away from them.

Marilyn has been clearing out leaves in the loft of the barn where they have been attempting to nest. Attempts to close up all the possible entries were to no avail.

We sort of forgot about it and when she went up there this week, the pile of leaves was moving. Poking around a bit revealed new super squirrels already in process.

Stay tuned for more baby pictures.






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