In Minnesota, Abdulla's Sea Salt Caramels are the best, bar none. The other day I had a craving for them; of course, there were none in the house. I had what might have been a brilliant idea. We did have some Nestlé's chocolate chips, Kraft caramels, and sea salt. One at a time and before the previous additions melted, I popped into my mouth a caramel, several chocolate chips, and sea salt.
In theory, all the right flavors were there but in reality it fell short. I guess that I will just have to get some of the real thing.
The squirrels, birds and we have come to a delicate truce. We got a squirrel deflector for one of the bird feeders. Essentially it is a low or shallow cone 18 inches in diameter at its widest end. It rests on a plastic block that we fasten to the post that supports the feeder. The gray squirrels stayed away for a few hours. I think they sat in their tree trying to figure out a way around the deflector. While they were thinking, the red squirrels went into action. Their approach was to climb the post about two feet up. Then they looked up and apparently decided they could not get to the food and stopped trying.
In the meantime, the gray squirrels came back. They stood on the highest part of the nearby snow piles and easily jumped to the base of the feeder without dealing with the deflector. Eventually I shoveled down the height of the snow piles and put out cracked corn for the squirrels. The gray squirrels continue to look for a way to jump onto the feeder but are foiled, at least for now. I continue to put cracked corn out because it is not that I do not want to feed the squirrels, I just do not want them to take everything out of the bird feeders.
This is how it works out.
1. The gray squirrels eat cracked corn but the red squirrels do not.
2. The red squirrels are so small they can get into the supposedly squirrel-proof feeder inside a wire cage. The feeder is designed in such a way that they can only eat a little at a time and cannot dump the bird seed onto the ground.
3. Both gray and red squirrels will eat the fallen bird seed.
4. The red squirrels claim the wire protected feeder and the ground under it, leaving the remainder of the yard to the gray squirrels. The red squirrels stand guard on a particular garden fencepost and a particular spot on the garden fence just in case the gray squirrels get too close to their protected space. Then the red squirrels hurtle themselves into the air and tear up the ground to chase the gray squirrels away.
5. The birds eat at both feeders and the suet feeder which the squirrels cannot touch.
6. We are quite happy with this arrangement as the squirrels are no longer emptying the bird feeders as fast as we fill them and the squirrels no longer seem to be hyper-scrappy.
7. I assume that the birds are happy with the arrangement too because they have a constant supply of bird seed.
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