Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for July 25, 2018

Wiley needs to expose him to a bear, they’re as bad as squirrels!

Stick to relativity Al it’s easier, squirrels will always win.

If Boris and Natasha can’t get the squirrel, what could Einstein possibly do?

Quantum mechanics and relativity were theorized but unfortunately, Slinky wasn’t a thingy in Einstein’s time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QjhBKDzKcE

Have a feeder wrapped in a grid that slides over the holes when squirrel’s weight hits. So, he jumps on it hard to get it swinging, pushes off hard to make it spin, and the feed flies out and falls to the ground. The genius spends a leisurely few minutes hoovering the spoils, then repeats. It’s only the one, and it is actually fun to watch, but uses up lots of feed in short time. I expect to see his offspring do the same one day.

The only good squirrel is a dead squirrel!

I found that throwing a couple of handful of peanuts on the ground keeps the tree rats away from the bird feeder

WBU feeder pole system with baffle – the only solution that worked for us having tried as many as Einstein here. If only we could now do something about sparrows and grackles…

‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.’ Apparently attributed to Einstein, but never said by him.

The trick with hazelnut trees is to grow them as a standard (at least 7ft of bare trunk below the lowest branches) and wrap a thin sheet of metal around the trunk – might work with bird feeders.

I used a greased pole for a while. Fun to watch.

Honestly, the Nobel committee really should’ve honored squirrels with a prize decades ago.

Dang that Bob!

What really gets me is when they figure out a way to get to the bag of bird seed in the pantry.

After many years of feeding birds, I’ve concluded that most people don’t adapt to squirrel abilities. They jump and leap so well that what looked like far enough is often half the distance they can span. They can claw into anything not made of metal. They can hang inverted by just one foot. If there’s the slightest weakness in any set-up, they’ll find it even if takes a dozen repetitions.

The genius Einstein may have been stymied by squirrels, but his fellow genius Charles Darwin had something to say about it. The smartest ones will figure out how to eat with minimal expenditure of energy. They’ll be the ones most likely to survive and reproduce. And of course very short generations mean that the newer, smarter ones will become dominant quickly. Eventually evolution will give us genius squirrels. It’s not the AIs we’ll have to worry about as our next global overlords, it’s the squirrels.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EnDwkclDcA

That doesn’t work, as Einstein was under 23 when he would have switched, and in the picture, he is apparently much older

I have a bird feeder that a squirrel can get on, but not get in. It has a thin feeding tube centered on the inside of a wire mesh dome. The distance between the wire dome and the feeding tube is longer than the squirrel’s arms. The tube has small feeding stations that don’t allow large quantities of feed to be ejected by any squirrel or raccoon gymnastics.

Life always finds a way.

Has anyone heard of something called “Twirl a Squirrel?” The weight of the rodent causes the perch to spin, throwing the squirrel off into the wild blue yonder followed by an uncomfortable meeting with the ground.

Did not need that, though. Thin metal pipe combined with a rat guard worked.

Three baffles, they can easily maneuver over one, can occasionally master two, but I’ve never seen one successfully conquer three.

Do what Einstein actually did … fake it. Mathematician Alexander Friedmann in 1922 discovered that Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity equation twice divided a number by zero!! It wasn’t until 1923 that Einstein acknowledged his folly.

Meanwhile, over at C Kennel…

Flaming Squirrel Sauce. It’s hot pepper oil that you can mix with your bird seed, and the squirrels hate the taste although it looses its zest after it’s on the ground a bit. It’s expensive, but with the cost of seed that’s not all millet, it’s worth it.

I had a way, mounted the feeder on a tripod, rigged a transformer connecting one side to metal sleeves around each pole, and the other to the metal feeder. Didn’t bother the birds, they only touched the feeder or the sleeve, never both. The squirrel had to touch both to reach the feeder, and got a jolt of more volts than could be ignored but low enough amperage to be non-lethal. Like a taser.

Just be glad that Squirrel wasn’t hanging out with a Moose.

Do you know how much Bird Seed a Moose can eat?

I just give them something to eat that’s easier to get to – peanuts in the shell, thrown onto the ground below the bird feeder. 18 to 20 a day seems to satisfy them. (I put some peanuts in the feeder as well – the blue jays like them too.)

There are even a few squirrels that, most days, appear as soon as I open the window to refill the feeder.

Consider that alot of the sharp-shooters in the Continental army got so good while squirrel hunting. So, given the role they played in securing American independence, I think they deserve a little birdseed.

So far the squirrel guards on my feeder poles are working. It’s fun to watch the squirrels sizing up the situation and occasionally trying to get past the guards. They know where the seed is but have to settle for the birds knock on the ground. An enterprising chipmunk dug tunnels to directly under the feeders so it can escape quickly if a hawk or one of the neighborhood cats sees it.

Yes…Yes they do…my money is always on the squirrels.