squirrels and raccoons

It appears to me that the battle with raccoons is only analogous to that of the squirrel debate. Our squirrels are quick learners, and have gotten into every bird feeder I have bought over the years. I have fashioned baffle, bought real baffles and still they get through around or under them. The Squirrel Be Gone II feeders gave the least resistance. They hung from the roof of that one and fed to their hearts content. I refuse to buy them anymore. With the Squirrel Be Gone I style: theoretically the weight of the squirrel brings a door to close over the food opening. They ate the perches and then the plastic to get into it. The little tree rats gnaw anything plastic and have destroyed many bird feeder perches.

We have read about various means to keep squirrels from our precious garden bulbs: put in chicken wire over the planting and under the soil, plant double in each hole, and so on.
I have given up my squirrel war. I now embrace God’s creatures. I have three bird feeders: finches, large birds (sunflower seeds) and one on the ground for the mourning doves with cracked corn. There is a squirrel feeder with peanuts and sunflower seeds.

I usually feed them all in the morning, and only enough so that they finish by dusk (when my little masked, rig-tailed friends come to visit). When is precious about the winter is that here in the north the raccoons are now hibernating. We haven’t seen one for a month or so. I keep the seeds outside in a metal can I inherited from my parent’s estate. Most of the time (spring and fall) I keep a big rock on it to keep the critters out. I learned that lesson last year as they gnawed off the bungie cords and dove into the large can. In the morning I found the can upended, with seeds EVERYWHERE.

I have taken the rock off of the seed can with the varmints asleep. The squirrels, while getting fat on food, do not yet have the strength of opposable thumbs necessary to pry off the lid. The mice find nooks and crannies and I found one in the bottom of the can once. It’s little friend did not survive the cold. I keep the lid on much more tightly these days.

We love feeding the birds and have accepted all the critters for the beauty of nature and the cycle of life that they embody. What we haven’t seen in our little paradise are groundhogs! I do not miss them navigating new dens in my garden. We learn to get along with all the wildlife. The turkey vulture I felt badly about. I haven’t seen it back. It has a job to do, though, keeping the road kill cleaned up. I wonder what it subsists on now?