It’s kind of like nuclear arms escalation. The squirrel raids my feeder....

I have a very special relationship with squirrels.
It’s not just that they crop up again and again in stories about a crazy Army buddy catching one with his bare hands, hungry raptors on campus and deadly air conditioning units. I also have a birdfeeder.
Some birders complain about the squirrels that rob their feeders, cheating their cardinals, wrens and flamingos. I personally think they’re half the fun.
Maybe it’s the eco-friendly version of hanging around watching the bug-zapper, but I’ve had many a good time seeing one of these little rats climb a sheer pole, make an incredible jump or flail their legs like Wyle E. Coyote running off a cliff as they fall backwards, foiled by my smooth metal squirrel-proofing.
It’s kind of like nuclear arms escalation. The squirrel raids my feeder. So I develop a deterrent. So the squirrel thinks up a way to defeat it. So I up the ante….
Then at some point I learned to stop worrying and love the [squirrels] – they’re really quite photogenic. Tuesday wasn’t the first time I’ve come into work with a photo of an inverted squirrel on my feeder. Our editor, Skip, jokes that I’m working the upside-down squirrel beat.
It’s better than the rabid possum desk I worked at my last paper. Still, I’m not sure where it fits on a resume.
But now I’m not content with the standard angle – I want a down the muzzle shot.
If I lay under the feeder I’ll spook the critter, and they are very clever. The eastern gray squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis, can smell a nut under a foot of snow (I bet you can’t do that). So I have to be stealthy….
I found a cardboard box I can place the camera in. A little bailing wire, a few yards of string…. Voila! I can place the boxed camera under the feeder, retreat to concealment and pull the string which pulls a wire that hits the shutter when I want to take a picture.
Yes, I was a Boy Scout.
So a few days ago, in preparation for the coming of the Squirrels, I revived a bird feeder design I’ve been tweaking for years involving nothing more than two soda bottles, some bailing wire and duct tape.
I’m an Eagle Scout, actually.
You can see a photo and crafting instructions on my blog, www.shelbystar.com/blogs.asp. And these things are so cheap and easy to make they’re the Liberty ships of birdfeeders – I can replace them faster than the squirrels/Germans can destroy them.
You see, it’s a whole lot deeper than simple bird feeder-box-tape-string-wire-photography. “Squirrel” is actually a nickname of mine – apparently a tag I earned at one fire scene where I hopped around quite busily, like a squirrel in the headlights, making sure to cover all the angles and working past the point of my sweat obscuring the viewfinder on my camera.
I hear Chief Roland Hamrick of the Cleveland County Fire Department does quite an entertaining impersonation.