Mother loved to sit on the porch and watch the birds and squirrels.
I was feeling guilty the other day that I hadn’t put out any feed in over two years, so I bought a bunch of feed and put a couple new feeders in the back yard so I could see them if I got up from the computer.
Fuzzy-tailed rats
Even though Brother Mark calls them “fuzzy-tailed rats,” I enjoy watching squirrel antics, so I hung an ear of corn off the maple tree. In two days, it was mostly gone, so I replaced it last night.
This morning, I looked out the window and the corn was gone. I don’t mean the kernels had been stripped off; I mean the WHOLE darned thing was gone. I looked all over the back yard, and there was not a sign of it anywhere.
So, which of you had a hankering for corn in the middle of the night?
You can click on the photo to make it larger if you want to check for fingerprints.
Not me!
And, where, exactly, were you between the hours of 2 a.m. and 8 a.m. CST?
Technically, Ken, they are fuzzy tailedTREE rats.
Get a Hav-A-Hart trap for the raccoon. I had the same problem.
I’m not sure I’m ready to go to THAT step yet, but when I went out to put a chain on the corn feeder, the ear of corn I put out this morning (and that was less than half-eaten) was gone.
Another tree rat discovered the feeder with sunflower seeds in it. He thought he had died and gone to heaven.
One of my favorite squirrel story is when we were living in Chicago at Halloween. My sister-in-law gave us some a door hanging of Indian corn that we hung on the front door and it looked great. Came home from work the next day and the screen on the storm door was destroyed, it was shredded beyond belief. All that was left was empty corn cobs and a shredded screen door. At least the squirrels were happy I hope.
I put out a fresh ear of corn last night, and took the precaution of using a fishing stringer to secure the feeder to the tree. When I got up this morning, there was one squirrel on the feeder chowing down, and another one on the ground beneath him gnawing on his droppings.
When I looked out just before noon, the ear of corn was gone. I scanned the backyard and found it about 50 feet from the feeder.
I have motion-sensitive web cams to monitor the inside of the house when I’m gone. I may redirect one of them to the backyard. On the other hand, I may not want to know what’s lurking back there.
Our back yards are so dark Ken I often wonder what is lurking back there. I don’t take my dog back there at night cause I’m afraid something might attack my dog.
Once I update the electrical panel, I’m going to have some lighting in the back yard. There’s one motion light on the back of the porch, but it doesn’t trigger as easily as I would like.