After-all, squirrel watching is just as much fun as watching silly birds. I build a miniature wooden ladder up the side for easier climbing and then fill the feeders with Chirpy’s favourite seed, suet and peanuts. I strip it of the metal, the stove pipe, and the copper cap. I return to the cottage and dissemble the feeder stand one last time. And is that a whole chirpy family that he has in his hole-in-the-tree home? Perhaps he has to provide for all of them. I can’t help but notice that he is looking a bit thin. So I decide to take a stroll along the forest trail telling my wife that I want to find Chirpy and gloat, but when I do see him he ignores me. Hard as it is to believe, I kind of missed him. I had won – I had finally won!įor the next few days I returned to my secret spying window to marvel at my great invention. He tried a couple more times, but failed. He gave it a try, but he slipped backwards and fell to the ground. Chirpy came out and surveyed the situation. I got thirsty while I watched and waited, so I grabbed a beer from the fridge and then returned to watch and wait some more. Then I waited, peering out secretively from my window. I dissembled the stand for the forty-third time, and closed in the bottom of the piping. Chirpy climbed up between the stove pipe and the post like a mountain climber scaling a chimney-shaped crevasse. I dissembled the unit again and added a length of stove pipe. The squirrel repeated the same process and then just used the cap as something to push off of, catapulting himself higher, in a circus-like trapeze manoeuvre, grabbing the base of a feeder before swinging himself aboard. I dissembled the unit again and added a cone shaped metal cap. He paced off three metres from the base of the post, turned, and sprinted up, his momentum taking him past the slippery metal (like a snowmobiler skipping their high-powered machine across an expanse of open water – for whatever reason). I put the stand back together and hid in the cottage once more.Ĭhirpy returned, and took in the new situation. I dissembled the post, dug it out of the ground, and moved it far from any tree or shrubbery. Then he climbed up a nearby maple tree, walked out to the end of a branch, and let his weight droop the spindly limb down to the top of the feeder. Then I headed indoors to witness Chirpy’s agonized reaction to my wonderful invention.Īs I peeked out of the cottage window, I watched Chirpy survey the situation, from all different angles. So I dug the post into the ground, tacked on the metal to make it rodent-proof, and built a cross-piece on top from which hung too well-stocked bird feeders. I had some old metal ducting stored in the shed that I knew would come into use one day. So, off I went to the local lumber yard to pick up a twelve foot, four by four post and a handful of wood screws. The Ultimate Cottage Daze Squirrel-Proof Bird Feeder Stand! It kind of has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? And with a few minor design modifications of my own, I could take ownership of this little project. Here, however, was a project that perhaps I could take on. She often says that about intricate building or renovation projects around our cottage, though I usually think it is her devious way of making me look foolish. “We (meaning me) could build that,” states my darling wife. The feeders sat atop four by four posts dug into the ground, while old stove piping fixed halfway up prevented squirrels from climbing. He had several bird feeder stands built judiciously around his grounds, easily visible from the back deck. It started with a brilliant idea, one that I stole from a neighbouring cottager. Or what I like to call D.I.Y., to save on my word count. No, it is about the wisdom that I am about to impart to you, the reader, so you too can become the ultimate cottage do-it-yourselfer. This little narrative isn’t about duking it out with a bushy-tailed rodent, or about fighting with nature. What am I going to do at the cottage all summer if I am no longer battling with my sinister rival? And, how will that rascal Chirpy actually win out again in the final paragraph of this column? Well, obviously you haven’t read the title above. Finally, in the end, I have won our on-going battle. I have built the ultimate squirrel-proof bird feeder.
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