The Saga of Orson and the Squirrels - Uncle Orson Reviews Everything

I started trying to feed wild birds innocently enough -- a few little birdfeeders styled like Christmas ornaments that I hung in our yard one winter.

I only did it because I had a freestanding pole with four arms from which I had hung plants in my brief, abortive experience with upside-down tomato growing (hint: it only works if you prune the plants rigorously, which I didn't, and you have to water twice a day during the summer, so forget it).

The pole was still good, even if the plants were gone, so I moved it to where the hammock hangs during the summer and suspended little birdseed dispensers from three of the arms.

Within a couple of days, they were empty. Unfortunately, they were empty because squirrels had knocked them from the poles and unscrewed the lids. The war was on.

I bought a "squirrel-proof" feeder that enclosed the tube of seeds in a metal cage that birds could get through and squirrels couldn't.

And they can't, it's true. Still, they can hang from the cage and reach in to take whatever has spilled onto the catching tray at the bottom. And then they can shake the feeder so more spills onto the tray.

But why would they bother with that when they discovered almost immediately how to -- once again -- unscrew the lid and simply climb down into the tube, eating as they went?

A lesser (or smarter) man than I might have given up, but no. I went to Lowe's and bought some metal fasteners that I passed through the seed tube and over the top of the lid. This worked -- the squirrels couldn't open the thing and eat it empty in half an hour.

Instead, it took them a couple of days by shaking the feeder and scooping seeds off the tray.

I bought a finch feeder -- a tube with slick plastic sides and bird perches, for thistle seeds and other bird favorites. Now I hung the cage feeder and the finch feeder on two arms of the pole, and plant baskets on the others. Very pretty. But the squirrels could empty both feeders in a couple of days -- who knew that thistle seeds were tree-rat favorites?

Not only that, but they spilled thistle seed onto the ground. I was not thrilled with the profusion of thistles that started growing there.

On the theory that I would rather pay to have our brick patio water-blasted twice a year to clean off bird poop than to fight thistles growing throughout our yard, I moved the pole, feeders, and baskets onto the brick. Later, I removed the plants and hung a caged suet-feeder and a hummingbird feeder on those arms, so it's a bird-feeding station only.

Except for the squirrels. I had thought the squirrels were jumping onto the feeders from nearby walls or trees, so when I placed the pole in the middle of the patio, I thought it would keep the squirrels off.

I was forgetting that squirrels are not only smart and agile enough to unscrew metal lids, they're also champion athletes. They were up that pole in no time. The birds were barely getting anything.

First, I bought squirrel food. Lowe's sells them -- lovely bricks of corn glued together (with some edible substance, I hope) and hung from a bungee cord. I placed this at the opposite end of the yard.

The squirrels do eat them, and it's fun to watch their agility as they do. But it doesn't stop them from going for the birdseed in the birdfeeders. It doesn't even delay them -- apparently the birdseed is easier and they only went to the official squirrel food when the birdseed was gone, or when other squirrels were using all the good spots.

Oh, and let's give credit to the chipmunks. They've been living in our yard now for decades, and they cause no grief at all. They can't climb the pole (or are nice enough not to try) and basically they scavenge what the birds (or squirrels) spill, helping to keep the patio cleaner. I like the chipmunks.

But the squirrels are bullies and chase them away when they notice them. This gives the struggle a moral dimension. It's not just that the squirrels are eating food intended for someone else (a.k.a. "larceny"), it's that they drive away other scavengers, from chipmunks to birds (a.k.a. "assault").

Squirrels are criminals, in short, and I am the only law enforcement available in the darwinian jungle otherwise called "the patio."

Winter is coming -- I can tell, because the low temperatures have finally dipped into the 60s -- and I want our patio to be a haven for wild birds all winter. So I spent all summer trying to find ways to foil the squirrels.

The smartest idea came early on: greasing the pole. I bought mineral oil and smeared it onto the pole and the plastic sides of the feeders. It was fun to watch the squirrels try to scramble up the pole and slide down despite their tightest grip. I reapplied the oil every week, and we started to get birds (finally) while the squirrels stayed on the ground.

Did I mention that squirrels are smart? Apparently the Einstein of squirrels lives in my yard -- or at least the Edison. Foiled for a while by the lubricated pole, Edison discovered that if he ran fast enough to the place where the braces attach to the pole, he could spring from there up onto the caged feeder and cling to that.

From there, he could climb to the top and get to the other feeders. And even though the sides of the finch feeder were lubricated, he could cling to the top with his hind legs and reach all four of the feeding perches. He was the only one who could do it -- but of course he sprayed the ground with birdseed and all his friends were able to join in the feasting. And while he was up there, the birds stayed away.

At Lowe's -- which takes its bird-feeding section seriously, I must say -- I bought three "squirrel baffles" -- inverted dishes that hang loosely. They block squirrels from above and below. I placed them directly on top of three of the feeders. When the squirrel tries to get over the baffle and reach for the food under it, the loose baffle tilts sharply and spills the squirrel off onto the ground.

When you place a baffle under the food, the squirrel simply can't get past the barrier. When he tries to climb around it or onto it, it tilts sharply again, and he spills off.

The trouble was, I couldn't put any of the squirrel baffles on the pole itself, because they had to be slid on from one end or the other -- and the pole I was using had wide spots at the top where the arms attached and at the bottom where the braces attached, so there was no way to get a baffle onto it.

The result was that while even Edison could no longer get to the finch feeder (partial victory), he could still jump up onto the caged feeder and from there to the suet feeder, where his arms could scrape fat and seeds from the outer 1/8 inch of the suet blocks.

So I decided to create my own squirrel baffle. After wandering through various stores, I finally settled on a plastic chair mat from Office Depot. I brought it home, cut off the under-desk tongue, cut a line to the middle, and then wrapped it around the pole and overlapped the two sides of the cut.

It worked until the sun's heat softened the plastic enough that (a) it no longer formed any kind of cone, but drooped like a flag on a windless day, and (b) was soft enough for the squirrels' claws to dig into the plastic a little. Now, instead of being a barrier, it was a highway.

I had already searched the internet -- but I didn't know the term "squirrel baffle" yet and so I kept running into the same array of squirrel-proof bird feeders. Finally, though, a search brought me to Duncraft.com, where one of their "recommended" items at the bottom of my browser gave me both the term "squirrel baffle" and the solution to my problems.

It's cone-shaped, like the other baffles I'd bought from Lowe's, but instead of having to slide from the top or bottom, it's completely open on one side, so you can slip it on at midpoint, then close the cone (which locks to itself). There's a bracket you can attach to the pole --whether it's round or square -- to set the height at which the baffle should rest.

I ordered it. It was on backorder. But when it came several weeks later, it performed exactly as advertised.

Of course, even the best product can't function properly when the customer is lazy and/or dumb. I opened the box and installed it after dark, and, being lazy, I simply looped the baffle around the pole and let it rest on the wide place where the braces attach.

The trouble was, the braces extend down at an angle, so that the rim of the baffle is closer, and while the other squirrels were (again) blocked, Edison got the idea almost at once and jumped onto the new baffle, springing from it up to the caged feeder.

But the solution was obvious. In daylight, I removed the baffle (already bedecked with feathers, seeds, and bird doo), attached the bracket a foot or so higher up the pole, reinstalled the baffle above it, and ...

And it's fun to watch Edison smack his little head into the bottom of the baffle.

Our birdseed is birds-only now, and the squirrels will have to make do with the squirrel food I put out for them at the back corner of the yard.

Duncraft is not the only useful source for wild bird products, however. I also buy things from Doctors Foster and Smith I have ordered from them before, since they sell a lot of fish and pond products that I've used over the years.

This has a barrier in the middle of the pole that does the same job as the baffle -- or so they say. If they're wrong, then I'll just order another squirrel baffle from Duncraft.

Was my war with the squirrels worth it? To me it was, because when a dozen or a score of birds are gathered on our patio, we sit in our eat-in kitchen or look out the window over the sink and enjoy watching them. It's non-electronic entertainment, and we feel like we're making the world a better place for birds -- and even for squirrels, since they can still scavenge what the birds spill and I occasionally put out food for them.

Nobody starves in our yard this winter, or that's the plan, anyway. Now we'll just see if my birdbath warmer keeps ice from forming during the really cold times.

Don't miss our free production of The Taming of the Shrew on Friday and Saturday nights at the LDS meetinghouse across from Claxton Elementary on Pinetop Road. Starting at 7:00 p.m., the show is presented from my adaptation of Shakespeare's original -- basically, all I do is update the jokes so you can understand them at top speed. Oh, and the costumes are from 1900 Montana, since they fit the rough-and-ready spirit of the play.

The metal chairs are uncomfortable, but the price is right and the show is short (for Shakespeare), only two-and-a-quarter hours. Children from six on up have a chance of enjoying it; please leave the younger ones home. This is Shakespeare as Shakespeare intended his comedies to be: fast and funny.

Yeah, Obama's administration believes in freedom and the free market, and they're not out to take over the health industry Just in case you see only the Leftist media (though in that case, why are you reading this paper?), make sure you read this story from the Wall Street Journal on how Health and Human Services is threatening to destroy any health insurer that dares to tell the truth about how under Obama's health care laws they have no choice but to raise their rates.

In other words, Obama's administration is declaring war on business and on free speech. The public has no right to know -- and most of the American media agree with that view, apparently.

Justin James wrote it as advice to consultants, but "10 Red Flags That Shout 'Stay Away from This Project'" is also great reading for anybody in the business world -- precisely because the problems that make a project a disaster for a consultant are also reasons why many projects collapse without one. Read it at TechRepublic:

Every Day Is Special

First appeared in print in The Rhinoceros Times, Greensboro, NC.

Thursday, Sept. 16 -- Power of Poetry Day

There's a double reason for remembering the power of poetry on September 16^th. Anne Bradstreet was born on this day in 1612 in England. She came to America in 1630, where -- despite the rigors of pioneer life -- she wrote poems. Unbeknownst to her, her brother-in-law carried some of her poems back to England, where it was published in 1650 under the title "The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America."

Thus she became the first published American poet and the first published woman poet writing in English. (Li Qing-Jao was a famous and beloved woman poet centuries earlier, but that was China.) Bradstreet's poems were later reprinted in Boston.

Nearly two centuries later, law student Oliver Wendell Holmes read a newspaper report that Congress was going to have the venerable Navy frigate USS Constitution -- "Old Ironsides" -- sent to a scrap yard. Holmes, believing that it was worth more as a monument than as scrap lumber, dashed off a poem in protest. It began:

Aye, tear her tattered ensign down!

Long has it waved on high,

And many an eye has danced to see

That banner in the sky.

"Old Ironsides" was published anonymously in the Boston Daily Advertiser of 16 September 1830, and was picked up and reprinted throughout the United States. Public outrage spurred by the poem caused Congress to appropriate money for the reconstruction and preservation of the ship. So because of that poem, Old Ironsides still floats today.

Of course, that all took place back in an era when we put our strongest feelings and clearest thoughts into poetry -- and then memorized and recited it frequently, both in public and private. Who now reads verse expecting to (A) understand it, (B) care about what it says, (C) memorize it, or (D) read it aloud to someone else?

Friday, Sept. 17 -- Constitution Day

On this day in 1787, delegations from twelve states at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia voted unanimously to approve the proposed document. (Rhode Island, expecting to go it alone on its economic strength in trans-oceanic trading and whaling, and suspicious of putting itself under the thumb of twelve other -- and larger -- states, did not send a delegation.)

"M*A*S*H, Robert Altman's ground-breaking 1970 satirical film about a mobile medical unit in the Korean War (based on Richard Hooker's novel and using Ring Lardner Jr.'s devastating screenplay) was sanitized, cheered up, and laugh-tracked for television, debuting on this day in 1972.

It was always a terrible idea for a sitcom, and anybody who thought Alan Alda was even remotely a substitute for the brilliant Donald Sutherland, or Loretta Swit for Sally Kellerman, or Larry Linville for Robert Duvall, was obviously wearing a suit and working for a network.

Yet, because of the brilliant writing and supervision of developer Larry Gelbart (who died on 11 Sept. 2009), this series became a monster hit. Its last episode (28 Feb. 1983) was the most-watched episode of a fictional television series in history -- officially seen by 105.97 million viewers. At that time, VCRs were still very expensive and relatively rare, so America was gathered around its TV sets all at once to reach those numbers. (That was our first night as Greensboro residents, by the way -- and though the TV was surrounded by piles of boxes we were unpacking, we watched it just like everyone else.)

Ninety years ago today, the National Football League was formed, though at first it was called "The American Professional Football Association." At the time, football was considered to be brutal, and it was only because college students persisted in breaking their bodies by bashing into each other on every possible occasion that the sport persisted at all, though there were serious movements to ban it. Baseball -- a game you could usually live through -- was the national sport.

Now, with vastly improved safety equipment and life-saving rule adjustments, football is far safer, while television's instant replays have made armchair quarterbacking the true national sport.

The original teams were:

Akron Professionals

Buffalo All-Americans

Canton Bulldogs

Chicago Cardinals

Chicago Tigers (folded after the first year)

Cleveland Tigers

Columbus Panhandles

Dayton Triangles

Decatur Staleys

Detroit Heralds

Hammond Pros

Muncie Flyers

Rochester (NY) Jeffersons

Rock Island Independents

The first team that is still playing in its original city and under its original name, the Green Bay Packers, joined the league in the second season, 1921.

Saturday, Sept. 18 -- Int'l Eat an Apple Day

To promote the beginning of fall with its vivid color and crispness, celebrate by eating an apple, the fruit of the fall season.

The New York Times published its first issue on this day in 1851. It debuted as The New York Daily Times. The name was changed in 1857. Sometime in the past thirty years it became a mere propaganda tool of the extreme Left, but for a century before that it deserved its reputation as America's newspaper of record.

US Air Force was established as a separate branch of the military on this day in 1947, although its heritage dates back to 1907, when the Army first established military aviation. Ship-based aviation remained the province of the Navy.

Sunday, Sept. 19 -- Int'l Talk Like a Pirate Day.

You know, some of us talk like a pirate every day.

Tolkien Week begins today, to promote appreciation and enjoyment of the works of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, who is best known for The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, though his poems and scholarly work are also worth enjoying. By sheer coincidence, last night I finished reading Lord of the Rings for the seventh time, and I still consider it to be far and away that greatest work of literature of the twentieth century.

Turnoff Week begins, as participating people voluntarily turn off their electronics for seven days so they can enjoy the real world and real people around them. So text all your friends and urge them to twitter about how the week has gone for them.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show, arguably the funniest sitcom ever, premiered on this day in 1970, making this its 40^th anniversary. Brilliant casting and brilliant writing took us into depths of characterization that showed us just how good and true comedy could be.

Monday, Sept. 20 --Nat'l Love Your Files Week

Filing (using paper in folders) gets a bad rap because people do it the hard way. "If a filing system is set up correctly, it's easy to maintain and a pleasure to use." It's true that filing systems are great when they allow you to lay hands quickly on any piece of paper you need, but to make that possible, you have to:

1. Understand where items should be filed and put them there

B. Take the time to file them instead of leaving them in "to be filed" stacks

III. Know which items are not worth filing and throw them away

4^th. Hire somebody with a deep and abiding commitment to order and efficiency to do the filing and the looking up.

Or you can just let Windows automatically stuff everything into your My Documents folder.

TV Guide and other media were full of chat about how the half-hour sitcom was dead. The great age of sitcoms -- The Mary Tyler Moore Show and All in the Family and their spinoffs, as well as WKRP in Cincinnati (ended in 1982) and Taxi (ended in 1983)-- was over, they said, and people were watching things like Fantasy Island and The Love Boat.

Then The Cosby Show premiered in1984, and all that talk about the End of the Sitcom evaporated. On the strength of Bill Cosby's personality, the onscreen relationship between him and Phylicia Rashad, and some wonderful casting of child actors, we got a new round of sitcoms -- and NBC began its decades-long supremacy on Thursday nights.

Oddly, though, one of the best of the new sitcoms, Cheers, had debuted two years before, and The Jeffersons, an All in the Family spinoff, would continue running till 1985 -- which kind of proves that the sitcom wasn't exactly dead before Cosby came on the air. In other words, what were they talking about?

Tuesday, Sept. 21 -- U.N. Int'l Day of Peace

Yeah, right. Day of Peace. United Nations. What do these two concepts even have to do with each other, with the U.N. General Assembly now being a hotbed of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, and the Security Council subject to the veto of two nations -- China and Russia -- that just love to see turmoil in the world? And with the only nation that actually takes the lead in stopping rogue nations from aggression against their neighbors now under a commander-in-chief who agrees with the U.N. General Assembly, the chance of peace is pretty close to nil.

Here's a clue: American isolationism doesn't lead to peace, it leads to the breakdown of the international order that has brought prosperity to all its participants for the past sixty-five years. And the U.N. has made exactly no contribution to that international order since the end of the Korean War.

Hurricane Hugo hit the American coast at Charleston, SC, on this day in 1989. Friends of ours who lived in Blowing Rock, NC, owned a beach house in Ocean Isle, which was supposed to be where the hurricane would hit land. The parents rushed there to board up windows -- only to have the hurricane land farther south and then cut a swath of devastation through SC and western NC, where their children were! I don't think there has been another hurricane that has caused so much damage so far from the coast.

Monday Night Football premiered on this night in 1970, making this the 40^th anniversary. Already by this time three games of the 41^st season of MNF will have aired: Baltimore Ravens at New York Jets and San Diego Chargers at Kansas City Chiefs on 13 Sep. and New Orleans Saints at San Francisco 49ers on 20 Sep. The glory days of Frank Gifford, Howard Cosell, Don Meredith, and John Madden may be over, but the show goes on.

Wednesday, Sept. 22 -- Elephant Appreciation Day

Celebrate the earth's largest, most interesting and most noble endangered land animal. While I'm not sure what any of us can actually do to help elephants, who are murdered by poachers in Africa and made redundant by mechanization in southeast Asia, it's worth reading about elephants and reminding ourselves that there's more than one way for intelligence to manifest itself. I suggest When Elephants Weep by Masson and McCarthy and The Elephant's Secret Sense: The Hidden Life of the Wild Herds of Africa by O'Connell.

Or, for a more fanciful look, check out my story "The Elephants of Posnan," which will be available for free this week at my online magazine, Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show at http://www.oscIGMS.com.

The Emancipation Proclamation was issued by Abraham Lincoln on this day in 1862. Lincoln has been criticized by idiots in recent years because the proclamation didn't free all the slaves -- only the slaves in rebellious states during the Civil War. What these idiots do not recognize is that Lincoln had no authority to free slaves in any of the states still in the Union. He could only issue such a proclamation under his power as Commander-in-Chief of the military, and only in conquered territory.

Up to 1862, the war was officially only about preserving the union -- though the sole reason for secession by the rebellious states was their insistence on the "right" to make some human beings legally the property of others, and their fear that a Lincoln presidency would interfere with that grossly evil and unChristian practice.

After the failure of Lee's invasion of Maryland at the Battle of Antietam Creek did Lincoln believe he had the political strength to issue the proclamation and openly make it a war against slavery. This was the last nail in the coffin of Confederate hopes of bringing cotton-hungry Britain into the war on their side. Britain was the nation that, inspired by Christian abolitionists, had declared war on slavery in the first place, using their worldwide naval supremacy to seize slavetrading ships of any nation anywhere in the world. There was zero chance now of Britain opposing the now-officially-anti-slavery North in the American Civil War.

This is Hobbit Day -- the shared birthday of hobbit heroes Bilbo and Frodo Baggins. Though hobbits don't exist officially, in fact Tolkien based their species' predilections on his own character and personality, and their land, the Shire, on the England he remembered from his childhood. There are plenty of hobbits left in England, and even if some of them need serious dental work, they are at the root of English culture and all the cultures -- including ours -- that grew out of it.

In 1903, Italian immigrant Italo Marchiony, who ran a pushcart business selling lemon ice (and, later, other flavors) in New York City, came up with the idea of dispensing the ice cream in a paper cone, soon changed to a pastry version. The first of his ice cream cones were sold on this day, and less than three months later, on Dec. 13^th of 1903, he was issued a U.S. patent for his mold for making cone-shaped pastry cups to hold ice cream.

Today is National Centenarian's Day, on which we recognize and honor individuals who have lived a century or longer. While in one sense, this is hardly an achievement -- all you have to do is not die -- at the same time it represents our own aspiration, especially when we see centenarians who are still able to get around and experience life, or who at least are able to read or watch television and stay connected. Who doesn't want to live to see at least some of their great-great-grandchildren enter this world? Or at least to find out who wins the Academy Awards or the Superbowl for one more year.

Some famous centenarians who are still alive:

Rupert Murdoch's mother, Elisabeth Joy Greene Murdoch, 103, inherited most of her husband's wealth when he died in 1952. While her son now manages the media empire, one of the last remaining bastions of non-Leftist, non-elitist news and programming in the English-speaking world, Dame Elisabeth has devoted her life to philanthropy, especially in her native Australia.

Frederica Sagor Maas, 110, was a playwright and screenwriter, with most of her film work appearing during the silent era. She was also an active feminist back when that meant lobbying for the vote, and was questioned by the FBI during the anti-Communist Hollywood investigations about some journals she and her husband subscribed to (you know, back when Congress thought it had the right to decide that certain media were un-American and should be banned for their political content, like, say, Fox News and conservative talk radio). Her autobiography, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim -- named for her last screenplay in 1947 -- was published in 1999.

Dorothy Young, 103, was Harry Houdini's assistant in 1925 and 1926. She left the act two months before his death, and later wrote two novels loosely based on her life. For a while she worked as an actress on Broadway, then toured the world with her second husband in a Latin dancing team.

Ida (Crowe) Pollock, 102, who had published fiction in her twenties, became serious about writing romance novels after her businessman husband's bankruptcy in 1950. Under pseudonyms like Susan Barrie, Pamela Kent, Rose Burghley, Mary Whistler, Averil Ives, Barbara Rowan, Anita Charles, Marguerite Bell, and Jane Beaufort, as well as her married name, she has written dozens of novels and continues to write and publish today. (Romance writer Rosemary Pollock is her daughter.)

Harry Bernstein, 100, though he worked in the film and magazine trades until he retired at age 62, didn't start his first book, The Invisible Wall, until he was 93, after the death of his wife, Ruby, after 67 years of marriage. He has since written The Dream and The Golden Willow.

John W. Donnelly, who will turn 104 tomorrow (23 Sep. 2010), gave up table tennis for thirty years, but when he moved to Florida in 1980 after he retired, he started up a table tennis club in Sun City and became National Senior Games Champion. He appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno inn 2006; at age 95 he married a woman 26 years younger than himself.

Albert Rosellini, 100, was governor of Washington from 1957 to 1965. A "New Deal Democrat," he is regarded by many as Washington's best governor in modern times. Among other achievements, he balanced the budget, though when he raised the state sales tax from 3.5 cents to 4 cents, Republicans dubbed him "Taxellini." He was the first Italian-American governor and the first Catholic governor west of the Mississippi.

All the above bios were taken from Wikipedia's centenarians list at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_centenarians. Or just google "centenarians."

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