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Teaching Mr. Squirrel

When it comes to stealing birdseed, squirrels are inventive. But they can be beaten.

I can see the squirrel through the window. It's poised on a branch of the cherry tree, head cocked, performing risk-versus-reward calculations. The bird feeder, stuffed with sunflower seeds, is hanging from a wire 3 feet away and 5 feet above the ground. The wire is no thicker than dental floss. The feeder is plastic. The metal perches are barely an inch long. Hmmm ...

This is the latest episode in my ongoing battle of wits with the rodent known as Sciurus vulgaris. Its mission is to fill its belly for the day in a few greedy moments. Mine is to make it as challenging as possible. Not that I have anything against squirrels. I'd love to have their energy, their focus, their aplomb.

But bright eyes and bushy tails aside, they're a nuisance. The squirrels scare away the cardinals and chickadees and gorge themselves on my provender. I wouldn't begrudge them a cheekful or two, but if they had the chance, they'd empty the whole cylinder.

Not that I blame them for going after easy pickings. It beats rummaging around for acorns, especially during winter. But I'll be damned if I'm going to set out a smorgasbord. So I made a point of buying a feeder just big enough to accommodate a middling bird (none of your crows, thank you) and hanging it so that a squirrel would have to be a prince of midair to get at it.

I haven't made it impossible, because that would take the sport (and the triumph) out of it. Nor have I made it a gimme. Either Mr. or Ms. Sciurus has to jump and hang on for dear, swinging life or shinny down the wire headfirst. If it manages that, it's entitled to a free lunch, within reason. But not without a harrowing bit of trial and error.

I've observed the learning curve of the newcomer. It tiptoes along the branch, peering at the feeder, calculating the angles, then deciding on a flying leap. But when the squirrel tries The Big Hug on the plastic cylinder, it slips off and tumbles end over end like a diver executing a back layout.

OK, I sense it deciding, I gotta make like a chickadee. This time, the squirrel lunges for the perch like a trapeze artist, hangs on as the feeder whips back and forth like a palm in a typhoon, but eventually gives in to vertigo and drops off.

Back up on the branch, head cocked again. Time to shinny, paw over paw, until the squirrel can wrap itself around the cylinder, stick its head into the opening, and chow down. I rap smartly on the window. The head comes up, pondering. Can this blue-eyed beast come through the glass? Nope. The head goes back into the opening.

When I open the door and head for the tree, the squirrel jumps down, dashes over to the fence, vaults atop the pickets - and stops. It retreats only as much as it has to. If I make a move toward it, it will bound off for the adjacent yard. If I go back inside, it will return to the cherry tree and shinny again.

The squirrel knows as much - and probably more - about me as I do about it, which is why I've developed a grudging respect for it. I admire its industry, resilience, persistence, and cunning. It just keeps coming, day after day.

Then again, that's its living. If the squirrel doesn't figure out a way to get at the feeder, it goes hungry. If it misses too many meals, it's out of business. Still, that doesn't mean I'm staking it to a daily banquet of sunflower seeds.

So I resolved to play hardball with Sciurus vulgaris and test its culinary sophistication. I bought a packet of hot red capsicum pepper, the stuff they use in those pasta-from-hell dishes that blow your head off, and mixed it with the seeds.

One cheekful was enough. The rodent jerked its reddened head out of the feeder with a Yow! look in its eyes, scampered off, and hasn't been back. The squirrel may be persistent and resilient, but it can't handle Cajun.