The Saga of the Squirrel Feeder

A few years ago "She Who Shall Not Be Named" decided she wanted a bird feeder for our place in the mountains. She selected one that was big, with easy access for birds and good sightlines for a viewer, and had me install it near a window so she could sit comfortably to watch it. All went swimmingly at first. She dumped seed into the feeder and the birds started coming.

Then came the squirrels. The feeder was supposedly squirrel proof, with sliding mechanisms that would keep them from climbing the pole. Of course that didn't even slow them down. They ran across limbs, wires, and roofs and launched themselves into the air in death-defying leaps to land on top of the bird feeder. There are a lot of squirrels in the trees around our place and they must have passed the word to friends and relatives all across the mountain. At all hours of the day and night we could hear the scrabble of rodent feet on the roof as they came to visit what had become the squirrel feeder. Needless to say, once the seed was gone it wasn't replaced.

For a while the feeder remained vacant -- a sad reminder of crushed dreams [sorry, that was over the top wasn't it?] then this spring wasps decided to build a nest right square in the middle of it. That really freaked her out and she devised a strategy to get rid of them. She would sit inside, open a window slightly, and slide a long pole out to knock the wasp nest over. She even got me to help. And it worked, sort of. The wasp nest lodged sideways in a corner of the feeder and the next day saw the busy little things repairing the damage we had done. A second day we knocked it over, and again the wasps returned. Finally, on the fourth day, we did sufficient damage that the wasps abandoned the feeder.

So now the onetime bird/squirrel feeder has become a planter. She planted morning glorys at the base and it has been completely taken over as the picture shows. When the glory fades this fall she will simply replace it with other plants; mums, winter cabbage, or something. And as for the songbirds -- they can fend for themselves.