Squirrels are not CR'd

The grey squirrel poses nicely!

There are two squirrel couples that frequent my deck. One is a pair of fox squirrels and the other a pair of grey squirrels. They fight. Their personalities are obviously different. They even eat differently. The fox squirrels eat each sunflower seed individually, in place, and spit out the shells. They are a bit messy. The grey squirrels stuff as many seeds in their cheeks as possible and then run off somewhere else to eat them. The fox squirrels are somewhat demanding, adventurous, and appear to be more trainable. I have a plan for this, as you will see.

I had been hanging the bird feeder in a juniper tree, right outside the breakfast room window. We get a lot of wind on the back of the house, since it faces south, the direction of prevailing winds. The winds are often 15-20 mph, in fact. This makes the feeder bang around and I often take it down and put it on a little glass table on the deck. The squirrels really appreciate this, since they have a hard time getting to the feeder in the tree. In fact, the grey squirrels don't seem to be able to get to it at all. However, the fox squirrels hang by their feet to feed at it just fine.

But, it does slow them down a bit. When I have the feeder on the table, the squirrels will eat at it all day long, until it is empty. The grey squirrels seem to eat enormous amounts. They are obviously not CR'd. This does not make me happy, since the birds I am actually wanting to feed are intimidated by the squirrels and just sit in the tree and fuss about it.

So, today I moved the feeder to a new location, hanging from the roof of the lower deck. The grey squirrels just disappeared, as soon as they saw the feeder was empty and then unreachable. But, the male fox squirrel was quite indignant. He bit off a flower in a pot on the deck. He hung around glowering at the door, looking in the window. He tried every way he could think of to get at the feeder, but it was just way too far out of his reach. So, I showed him a little glass of sunflower seeds through the door glass. He came up to the door and put his little paws on the glass, looking in. I did not get a picture of his, but he was pretty cute. At some point in all this effort on his part, he seemed to just get tired. He laid on the deck railing in a most un-squirrel like way for 10 minutes.

So, I plan to train him to come up the the door by giving him some seeds each time he does. This may be a mistake on my part, since having a beggar squirrel with a big appetite might really not be that great. But then, I am somewhat inspired by this video I saw recently: