Miracle (Man-Made)

~ Live & Learn

carl-spackler-funny-caddy-shack

DK: How much for the bird seed?
SK:  $40.
DK: $40? Per bag?
SK: Yes.
DK: How many bags a month?
SK: Two.

I do the math: (# bags) x (months in a season) x ($40) x (10 years) = blood pressure increase.  And the torment was first recorded here in this post: Squirrels. Cardinals. Bumble Bees. And Me.

Pick any spring.
Or any summer, or any fall for that matter.
Or any year, for the past 10 years that we’ve lived in this house.
The picture: Same.

I’m sitting, reading in the backyard, transported to C.S. Lewis‘ world of becoming of a thousand men and yet remaining myself…seeing with a myriad of eyes, but it is still I who see.  But, what I see, damn it, is Vermin.

Interrupting my bliss is their rustling. Their relentless rattling of aluminum, scratching and clawing at seed. Hanging upside down, these ravenous beady eyed creatures work to empty the bird feeders one by one – frightening off the intended recipients, who flutter up to the leafy branches overhead until the insatiable keel over from exhaustion.

I watch, akin to Ralph Cramden, with his steel coin changer hanging from his belt loop, ejecting coins down their gullet.

Annoyed, and then some, I might get up and shoo them off. They return.

I might find stones, chuck them, whistling wide of the mark hitting the fence with a thud. They return.

I might turn on the water hose, the long stream catching them unaware. They scurry off, and return, in minutes. And bring two or three relatives with their backpacks to lunch.

I’m Carl Spackler (Bill Murray) in Caddy Shack with the heavy military equipment, with equal success.

10 years of this. 10 seasons of this. And finally, when you need a solve, you do what we all do.

I Googled it.

And then you do what many of us do, when we find it. I ordered it from Amazon.

Two days later, the UPS driver hands over the boxes.  I’m a child on Christmas Day. Superior intelligence has arrived.

Licensed to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. A man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit – ever. They’re like the Viet Cong – Varmint Cong. So you have to fall back on superior intelligence and superior firepower. And that’s all she wrote. (Carl Spackler)

Superior firepower, and that’s all she wrote. A Brome 1016 Squirrel Buster Finch Feeder made by Brome Bird Care in where else? Canada. Superior Canadian engineering.

So, the natural order has been restored.

The birds perch on the bird feeder.

The Squirrels forage on the ground below.  Periodically they’ll take a run at the bird feeder, difficult to shake the habitual behavior from 10 years of hardwiring in the DNA of multiple squirreldom generations. They hang upside down, shake the cr*p out of it, and then drop their heads, mope, and give up.

And here I sit, book in hand, smiling.

Shake baby, shake.

Man: 1.  Vermin: 0

Notes: Photo: credit. Related Posts – Scraps.

37 thoughts on “Miracle (Man-Made)”

  4. Can’t stop laughing.
    Doesn’t Apple have an app to connect to your wrist-watch that’ll vibrate everytime a squirrel goes near the bird feeder?
    Then I wish Susan would mess with you and set it where it vibrates everytime there is one in the yard.

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      1. Slow moving but seriously stubborn and can destroy lives Mr K. Ha!! Some people never recover and some families leave their homes in fear and frustration! Have you ever heard a possum hissing all night in the roof? As for Squirrels, they may be fast but they are all so cute!! 😁 lol

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  8. This made me laugh out loud, pal. My parents waged a similar war. They ended up with some sort of gizmo that fed the birds,but spun wildly in circles if a squirrel hopped on in search of food. Gave me vertigo just to watch the whole thing play out, but after losing so much seed to the voracious vermin, my parents were positively giddy every time a squirrel went careening off into the yard, catapulting outward as if launched from a centrifuge. It’s the little things in life, no?….. 😉

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  9. Dave, interesting and hilarious. I am struggling with the same notion. Tried to move the bird feeder to several locations around the yard. We used fish line as someone recommended but to no avail. Ezan told me about the ring over the top of the feeder which I ignored but I guess it does work.

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  12. This one made me smile. I remembered when the marvel arrived after years of watching the scene you so eloquently describe. And finally peace at our backyard in MD. Peace in the soul.

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      1. No secret sauce, David. Just finally found a feeder on a straight pole with a round squirrel proof metal cylinder in the middle, and placed it in the middle of the lawn. Not once did the squirrels get to the feeder. But it was quite entertaining to watch them try.

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