Syracuse.com - Squirrel strategies: Sometimes they're wanted, but not always

[HuntingNY-News]

The unseasonably warm winter has kept them active in recent months. Like anything else in the wild, they're constantly on the prowl for food -- particularly around bird feeders.

Jim Mortensen photoThe unseasonably warm winter winter has resulted in a noticeable number of squirrels on the prowl for food.

There’s no shortage of squirrels this winter.

The unseasonably warm winter has kept them active in recent months. Like anything else in the wild, they’re constantly on the prowl for food — particularly around bird feeders.

Readers shared the following tales of their dealings with the furry critters.

Squirrel lady of Tip Hill

Charlene UpDike said she set up several bird feeders when she moved to the Tip Hill area of Syracuse several years ago. The majority of visitors, though, were pigeons, starlings and sparrows.

“I used to live out in the country and I missed the wide variety of birds,” she said.

UpDike decided instead to focus on feeding squirrels.

John Berry/The Post-StandardUpdike puts a new cob of corn on her unique squirrel feeder.

“I’m home all the time, so I needed some kind of entertainment here,” she said and laughed.

She feeds about a dozen squirrels each day that stop by her front yard from all directions in her neighborhood. There’s a covered kitty litter box with a front opening on her porch that’s full of feed, and a ceramic bowl at the bottom of her steps that’s overflowing with pumpkin seeds.

Most spectacular, though, is the tree in her front yard where she’s nailed a big pinwheel with metal spikes. She puts dried corn cobs on the spikes, some slathered with peanut butter. The squirrels perform all sorts of acrobatic moves to get at and hold onto the cobs.

UpDike said at least three squirrels will take peanuts from her hand. She figures she spends about $20 weekly on a variety of food: songbird mix with berries, pumpkin seeds, peanuts, dried corn cobs and a special squirrel mix of corn and sunflower seeds.

UpDike has given several of the regulars names. She looked out her front-door window and pointed out a couple. “That big black one, that’s Hercules,” she said. “That scrawny, almost hair-less one, we call him crackhead.”

The squirrels frequently catch the attention of passersby.

“I’ve had cars stop. People take pictures with their cell phones ... even videos,” she said.

John Berry/The Post-StandardA squirrel contorts itself to reach for a corn cob on Updike's unique feeder.

The Vaseline solution

Gloria Cook, of Camillus, said she has had bird feeders for years.

She uses a “shepherd’s hook” sort of pole, on which she’s attached her feeder. It features various seeds and suet. The local squirrels, though, have been filling up lately at her expense.

“I love my birds,” she said. “I get cardinals. I even have a hummingbird feeder. Those squirrels have even tried to get into that syrup.”

At first, she said, she put axle grease and oil on the pole.

“That wasn’t thick enough,” she said. “I decided to try Vaseline.”

She bought a big plastic jar and puts on thin plastic gloves when she periodically applies it to the pole.

“It’s kind of messy, but who cares?” she said. “They’re not getting up there and keeping my birds away.”

She said squirrels can get nasty if they key in on your house.

“They can chew right through wood and get into your attic or eaves,” she said.

A different kind of snack

Tom Adessa, of Auburn, has two bird feeders in his yard, and there always seems to be a bunch of squirrels about.

Tom Adessa photoThis squirrel enjoys a dog biscuit slathered with peanut butter on the Adessas' window sill.

“A couple of them sit in our dining room window, looking inside as if to say, ‘I’m hungry,’” he said, adding that he and his wife, Martha, occasionally put out peanuts.

“One of them developed a taste for peanut butter on a dog biscuit. My wife discovered this after running out of peanuts one day and putting that out for the squirrel instead,” he said.

It’s not all fun and games.

“We had a wooden suet feeder with wooden sides and a wire insert in the middle. They couldn’t get to the suet, so they chewed through the wooden sides,” he said. “My wife was hot. It cost $35. She bought it at a craft show.”

A shocking approach

Jim Mortensen, of Oxford, in Chenango County, wrote that he’s always had a bird feeder just off his deck .

“Once the squirrels found the feeder, feeding them plus the birds was expensive in terms of food and destroyed feeders,” he said. Three Christmases ago, he received a “Wild Bill’s Squirrel-Proof Feeder” from his youngest daughter’s family.

“This feeder operates using a 9-volt battery that powers two sides of a circuit — one is the center hanger and tray; the other a disc on top, plus the four metal perches along the bottom,” he said. “When a squirrel or raccoon climbs down the hanger or jumps to the tray and comes in contact with either the disc or perches, it gets a mild electrical shock.”

It worked.

“They would sit on nearby branches — huddled up, tails over their backs — and eye the feeder, but not attempt to get on it,” he said.

Jim Mortensen's photoA squirrel emerges after stuffing its face in Mortensen's squirrel feeder.

But Mortensen, who said he hunted squirrels as a teen and remembers the fine stew his mom used to make with the meat, felt sorry for the shocked squirrels. He bought a metal squirrel feeder that he keeps filled with corn and sunflower seeds.

The electrified bird feeder, though, occasionally malfunctions.

“The batteries will die and/or if it is wet or snow-covered it will not work. A couple of the squirrels have figured this out and will rob it when the power is out,” he said. “When I replace the battery or dry the contacts, however, we do get a short term of revenge.”

A ‘black-hearted’ rodent

Kristin DeCare, of Volney, said she enjoys feeding birds throughout the winter, but at any given time there’s at least eight gray squirrels on her 6-by-7-foot deck.

“Usually, I spread some sunflower seeds on the deck to keep them off my sunflower seed feeder,” she said.

One day a little red squirrel with a “really bad” attitude showed.

“He’s jumping at and chasing the grays. I saw it chasing the birds, too,” she said. “Once it even tried to tackle a mourning dove.”

One day she noticed it on the deck railing, eating a bird.

“It managed to get itself a goldfinch,” she said. “It made me so mad that I told my husband it had to go.

“So after a couple of attempts, he did shoot it and that was the end of that miserable, bird-eating, black-hearted, little rodent.”

View the full article on The Syracuse Outdoors Blog