Fooled again by squirrels

It is now official.
I’m dumber than a squirrel.
Faithful readers of this column (both of you) may recall that I’ve been sparring with our backyard squirrels over a birdfeeder.
The birdfeeder, which I bought at a benefit auction for John Jay Center for Learning last fall, is intended for birds. Thus the name: Birdfeeder.
But when I installed a decorative hook beside the garage door, filled the feeder with sunflower seeds, and hung it up, I soon learned that the neighborhood squirrels (Actually, they are our squirrels and ours alone. I don’t think the neighborhood at large would claim them.) had figured out how to climb a trellis then jump over to the decorative hook and swing down to where the sunflower seeds awaited as a feast.
I yelled at the squirrels. I chased them away. The slingshot I’d received for Father’s Day broke in mid-shot. Apparently the intensity of action was more than it could handle.
And finally, I gave up.
I let the birdfeeder hang there, empty for much of the winter.
There were three other feeders to choose from, so we still had our usual sparrows, juncos, jays, robins, and mourning doves.
But the new feeder, the one I’d bought at auction, hung there empty.
About three weeks ago, I had what I thought — mistakenly — was an epiphany.
What if, I thought, we used the decorative hook for a hanging plant. Then if we installed another hook on the opposite side of the garage door, we could hang the new feeder there.
Genius!
Though my wife went shopping for another decorative hook, I ended up installing one she’d bought several years ago and never gotten around to hanging. (Do not ask.)
It seemed the perfect solution. Unless the squirrels somehow managed to scale the post for our driveway basketball goal, there was no way they could gain access.
On one of those very rare weekend afternoons when the weather wasn’t miserable, I got up on a step-ladder with the drill and installed the birdfeeder in its new home.
It looked great.
Not only would it foil the squirrels, but the garage was almost styling. With a hook on the west side for hanging plants and a hook on the east side for a birdfeeder, we were simply sitting back waiting for the folks at HGTV to call and try to book us for a special.
And for a little over a week, all was good.
Nuthatches and chickadees and finches were regular visitors at the re-located feeder.
The squirrels, meanwhile, were baffled.
Now they were faced with the ultimate temptation: Four completely inaccessible birdfeeders in the same backyard. It was enough to make a grown squirrel cry.
And then something happened.
Maybe they held a meeting or something.
Maybe they tapped into a GPS system or Google Street or maybe they sketched something out on the back of a squirrel cocktail napkin.
Whatever it was, it worked.
I was sitting at the kitchen table when I watched, in awe at my own stupidity, as a squirrel climbed up the trellis, jumped to the old hook we had been using, then skipped to a little ledge above the garage door that I’d completely ignored. It was a little ledge that amounted to a squirrel freeway directly to a birdfeeder full of sunflower seeds.
I responded the way any mature adult male would: I yelled a series of unprintable words at the squirrel and chased it away.
It left.
But what didn’t leave was the unshakeable knowledge that now, it’s official.
I am dumber than a squirrel.[[In-content Ad]]