Gratuitous Cards and Gifts

I can understand when circumstances preclude sending Christmas cards.  We sent none in 2009.  And I suppose it would be fine to send ecards if a person is otherwise not able to mail cards.  But this year I have received several ecards from people I know to be perfectly able to sign and address cards.  They always get caught by my spam blocker and I simply hit "silently discard."  Am I being unreasonable?  Perhaps so.  Except in rare circumstances I believe people should decide whether or not to send cards.  And if they decide to send cards they should send real cards.

I feel much the same way about gratuitous gifts.  Everyone has acquaintances with whom you have exchanged gifts.  There comes a time when the relationship has changed, either by moving away or moving on.  When that happens and the gifts are more of a burden, then it's time to stop the exchange.  One of our relatives sent us Hickory Farms packages for several years.  What's the problem with that?  We lived in Wisconsin at the time, home of some of the best and freshest cheese around.

The best Christmas gifts are those that clearly indicate that the person knows you and has selected a gift that is right for you.  So it is with one of my best friends.  When she last visited us, she thoroughly enjoyed watching my husband suddenly rise from his seat and fly out the door to attack a squirrel with his super-duper water gun.  Yes, my husband hates those beady-eyed little monsters as much as I do.

When her Christmas package arrived yesterday, she had included a perfect gift for my husband.

Perfect

Although my friend indicated that my husband need not wear it, he will.  In fact, he will wear it to Wild Birds Unlimited to pick up another "squirrel proof" bird feeder.  It gets pretty chilly running out on the deck in the midst of winter.  And of course he cannot take time to close the door or the squirrel will be gone.

When will we learn to stop exchanging gifts when it becomes a chore rather than a pleasure?  I can assure you with confidence that my friend had almost as much fun sending this gift as my husband did in receiving it.  And that is how it should be.



[Totally unrelated note:  If you are a fan of NPRs "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me," or a fan of Neil Gaiman you need to turn to BBC America Friday night at 8:00 pm (EST).  The show will be televised with Neil Gaiman as the special guest.]

Sometimes We Do Share

We live in the woods. Squirrels live in the woods. We feed the birds. Squirrels like the same food. So it's a constant struggle trying to outwit the squirrels, who by the way, have plenty of nuts and berries around.

We have a variety of birdfeeders offering different kinds of seeds and suet. The squirrels have shown little interest in trying to get at the feeder with cracked sunflower seeds so we have not used a baffle to protect it. At any given time, there are several different types of birds at the stations. We almost always see nuthatches, chickadees, titmice and goldfinches when we look out at this feeder. They seem to have no problem sharing.


In fact, we have had some rather unusual visitors to this particular feeder. Here a female Pileated Woodpecker and a female Eastern Towhee are feeding. A bit strange for the woodpecker to go for the seeds at a feeder clearly not well-designed for woodpeckers. And the towhee is usually a ground feeder. But they shared nonetheless.

I mentioned that squirrels have not been particularly interested in this feeder. Well, that was true until this week. And, wouldn't you know? One of the beady-eyed monsters was determined to try some of this seed.

Well, we can put a stop to that. One of my husband's PVC pipe and duct tape baffles now surrounds the pole. When the squirrel tries to climb, the pipe swivels. Not especially pretty, but quite effective. (This is the second generation homemade baffle, by the way. There's always a method for a man to improve any invention using PVC pipe and duct tape.) Since the birdfeeders hang from the upper deck at the back of the house looks aren't terribly important.

In all our years of feeding birds, this is the only truly squirrel-proof feeder we have found. It has a spring tension that shuts off the food at a given weight. We have had others with springs that shut down with the weight of large birds (doves) and squirrels. But in each of those, the squirrel would eventually learn to hang from his hind leg and scoop the seeds without tripping the spring. The current feeder is longer than the squirrel so he can't do that little trick. Well, unless we have a basketball playing squirrel who towers above all the others. So far we have had only normal-sized rascals. This particular feeder is made by Wild Birds Unlimited and is called the WBU Eliminator. (Oh, if it REALLY eliminated the squirrels I would pay a fortune for it.) But it does eliminate the squirrel feeding.

It is almost blasphemous to hate squirrels in Transylvania County. We have white squirrels here and Brevard promotes them as big tourist draws. (Guess the scenery, waterfalls, and national forests aren't enough.) You name any type of tacky souvenir you can imagine. Yep, we've got that with a white squirrel on it.

We occasionally see them in our forest and I don't like them any better than the gray ones. I just call them the beady-eyed white devils.

It's Ugly, but It Works

Several weeks ago I mentioned that my husband was on a mission to create something to keep the squirrels from getting to the suet.

Give a man the proper tools (PVC pipe, duct tape, saw, and WD40) and enough time and he will come up with something. Our birdfeeders on the deck hang over the deck on slanted poles. The squirrels learned how to climb the poles and get at the suet feeder. One squirrel was actually chewing off pieces of the feeder. My husband split a PCV pipe lengthwise (no easy feat) and pried it open enough to snap it over the pole. He used duct tape (do they ever use anything else?) to secure the pipe, then sprayed WD40 over it all.

When the squirrels try to climb the pipe, it swivels and the squirrels scurry back, or fall off. It has worked for a month now, so we keep hoping.

The baffle is quite unattractive. But the deck is not visible to anyone except us, and we don't mind the unsightly baffle. The birds don't mind too much, now that they have learned not to sit on it. I took a few photographs so you could see the result of my husband's labor.

I'm so sorry that darned woodpecker got in all the pictures! She might have distracted you from looking at the baffle. But I didn't have the heart to shoo her away.