Man vs. Nature... Part I

It is the stuff of legends - the ongoing struggle between man and the wild. This battle - as old as time - is widely fought, and means man must use all of the knowledge, ingenuity and cunning at his disposal to triumph over a force of a nature so powerful, it is virtually unstoppable.

I refer, of course, to the battle to keep the squirrels out of the bird feeder. This is a battle that has driven more than one perfectly rational human being to commit acts which confound, confuse (and perhaps even frighten) his family and friends. I’m going to share one such story with you now. Names have been with-held to protect the identity of my father-in-law.

We take you back a number of years, to a winter day shortly after our hero moved to Caledon. The homeowner’s lovely rural property is a scenic, private retreat and he and his wife enjoy the company of natures winged creatures so much they install a bird feeder in their yard.

All is well for a number of weeks but soon, the squirrels discover that a new “all you can eat buffet” has arrived in town. The homeowner is not too concerned. He puts a “squirrel collar” on his feeder, assuming he has put paid to his unwanted seed-poacher. But he has underestimated his adversary…

A few days later, he looks out his kitchen window just in time to witness an acrobatic act worthy of Cirque du Soliel. One of the squirrels has discovered that if he travels far enough out on one of a neighbouring birch tree’s branches, he can generate enough “lift” to launch himself onto the bird feeder, thereby circumventing the offending collar.

The homeowner retaliates by getting busy and giving all of the trees neighbouring the birdfeeder a good, thorough “haircut”, assuming this simple act will thwart his red-coated foe. But alas, he is wrong.

So it goes… over weeks, months, seasons, and years, our hapless hero uses every humane and ingenious idea he can come up with to protect his precious feeder. He employs wider collars, self-closing feeders, motion sensors and noise-makers - all with no success.

But is our hero a beaten man? Never. He now realizes that nothing on the market will work on his particular squirrel - a squirrel so wiley that he will have to manufacture something of his own design, if he ever hopes to win this war.

And so a new battle is begun. The last report we had from the battle front involved the re-engineering of an old metal lamp shade and a complicated system of pulleys, wires and gears which would somehow protect the feeder and dislodge the squirrel, should it try another assault. Still in the planning stages, we are given to understand that this new weapon will be added to the feeder sometime in the next week or so. I should probably mention that the bird feeder is now starting to develop a somewhat “unusual” appearance - something that fits somewhere between “alternative garden art” and “home-made rocket launcher”.

In all of this struggle, there is hair-pulling, fist-shaking and - yes, I suspect a certain amount of questionable language… but there is also a grudging respect for the instinct, cunning and determination that drives the squirrel just as hard as it drives the man.

In the end, we fear it will come down to “nuts”… either the battle with the squirrel will be won and it will return to a diet of them, or the man will eventually lose his battle (and his mind) and be diagnosed as one.

We hope you’ll join us next week for Man vs. Nature, part II.