Squirrels Love You (For Your Birdseed)

Hole In The Tree Gang

I’ve been busted so many times my rap sheet resembles that of a politicians. Like them I’m a cheatin’, lyin’, opportunist looking for love in all the wrong places. My only saving grace is that I am one of the cutest little devils to ever walk the face of the Earth. I don’t mean to brag or boast but I can convince the stingiest miser on the planet to feed me peanuts. In minutes I can have me eating right out of his hand. It is actually a form of hypnotism. I get them staring at my tail as I move it back and forth very slowly. When I get them a little groggy I stare them right in the eye. They think they are enjoying a nice, innocent Kodak moment when actually I have taken over their mind and reprogramming them. From that time on they forget about those stupid chatty birds that don’t even have the decency to relieve themselves away from the feeder. They concentrate on my dietary needs. I have their full attention. They respect me and I respect the fact that they respect me.
For a lot of years squirrels were losing market share in a big way. They even started calling the backyard feeding craze, "The Bird Feeding Craze." Some people were even promoting anti-squirrel sentiments that began to catch on with homeowners. Conniving marketing plans convinced a majority of homeowners that they did not like squirrels. People started believing this bunk and even brainwashing their friends and neighbors as if it were abnormal to enjoy a cute little squirrel at the feeder.
Most rodents would have given up trying to win the war on acceptance. We could have thrown up our paws and just lived with a combative relationship but that is not our style. We know were good and this was our time to shine. It was PR in its finest hour. Within a few short years we have gained back double-digit marketshare percentages. We are back in vogue and people are lovin’ us again.
Squirrel feeding is now a multimillion dollar industry and every retailer and manufacturer in North America is jumping on the band wagon. New varieties of squirrel food are hitting the market faster than you can say, "Jiffy." We even have our own line of suet now. That’s right, call me fathead just don’t call me late for dinner.
We owe a lot of thanks to The Dick E. Bird News for seeing our strengths early and promoting us when the rest of the world seemed to be turning on us. I can’t say enough about myself. I am a wonderful member of a marvelous species and I just hope you get the opportunity to share some quality time with me at your feeder this year.
—Hairy Houdini

Free Market Squirrel Feeders

I don't need a bunch of politicians to kill my free capital market. I control it myself.

Oh, how times have changed. People that used to throw stuff at me are now trying to hand feed me. Sometimes I even take their handouts but I have no intention of being domesticated.

I am a rebel without a cause. As docile as I may look I am always on high alert. They are not turning me into some hand-fed, furry-faced, pudgy pacifist. You never know when some generous Jekyll is going to make me want to Hyde.

I stay in shape even though most people have stopped chasing me. I don’t think it is from compassion—I think the old fools are past their prime and can’t find the energy to attempt thwarting me any longer.

I’m an industry now and they know it. Wherever they go they will find squirrel feeders and squirrel-proof feeders. I have the power. I manipulate the consumer and the manufacturer. There are certain feeders that seem squirrel proof. They are usually quite pricey. For a year or two I let people think I can’t crack them. It takes great willpower on my part to leave them alone for such a long period of time—but I’m letting them ripen. Word gets around that these contraptions are squirrel-proof and before you know it they are flying off the store shelves no matter how much they cost. Some of these feeders are hanging in every backyard in North America piled high with the best quality seed money can buy.

Once a majority of people are fully vested in these dream machines, the swindle is sweet and I move in for the Hairy harvest.

Buy this time they are so heavily invested in new hardware and seed they can’t afford to try anything else. Their seed market has just crashed and they are too embarrassed to admit to themselves or their friends. In fact, they convinced all their friends to buy these silly contraptions. Are they going to run over and tell them they were wrong, it was all a mistake? No, they are going to continue the hoax that their feeder is still squirrel-proof. Deny, deny, deny.

Don’t let this pretty face fool you. I am smarter than the average squirrel. I work on leverage and other people’s birdseed. I sleep late, go to bed early, sun myself for hours during the day and enjoy the good life. You mess with me, I give you just enough rope to hang your new feeder.
—Hairy Houdini

A squirrel's Stock Market

"Don't Put All Your Eggs in One Nest Girls!"

You probably all remember my stock picking successes during the go-go years in the technology sector. Like most people when the crash came I lost all my nuts. I learned a very valuable lesson during those dark days of declining DOW downsizing. Never put all your nuts in one knothole.

This has helped me during this time of Depression Like market conditions that have cleaned out not only the bank account of the people I live with, but also their bird feeder. They can't afford to fill that thing with black oil sunflower anymore. Not only did oil jump 20% in one day but also black oil sunflower. Can you believe people are putting the stuff in their cars. What a total waste of squirrel food. But I am not worried. I learned my lesson. I started saving early and I didn't put my nuts in the commodity market. I put them in a knothole.

I had a neighbor do that recently. A little red squirrel named Cocky. He had all the answers. Never stopped to say as much as hello. Just running all the time, collecting food, raiding bird nests, chewing into bird feeders, and breaking into attics. He was giving decent squirrels, who wanted to go straight, a crooked reputation.

This little furball would even steal from a brother squirrel. But what goes around, comes around. That little tramp hid every tidbit of food he didn’t eat immediately in one spot. He had a food cache that would make corn silo pale in comparison.

No one let on we knew where his gold mine was. We let him work all fall gathering and pillaging. On Thanksgiving the whole neighborhood met at his place and fed until our faces were so full we couldn’t bend our heads down to look at our big bellies.

It’s going to be a long winter for that commodities trader. He has gone short on nuts and long on cold. I can’t guarantee he will learn a lesson from this experience. Some individuals never learn. But let this be a lesson to the rest of us. Don’t be greedy, diversify your retirement nest eggs into more than one knothole, be neighborly, honest and frugal.

A Squirrels Brain

BEFORE

AFTER

The most highly developed section of a squirrel brain is the stomach, according to recent studies. I thought the stomach was a seperate organ all together but I have always known the two were really good friends and always watch out for each other. The researchers have not figured me out yet.

Here is how it actually works: My nose and eyes detect food. As soon as my nose smells food it sends a quick email to my brain. At that point my one good eye looks around for some nut with a broom. If the perimeter is clear the eye sends another quick email to the brain. This is called dedicated sense management. The brain is a clearinghouse for food information. Once the eye and nose information clears the brain decides what to do. If it seems safe the legs recieve a quick email from the brain to haul tail to the food cache as fast as a rodent can run and stuff the face to capacity.

This emailing is going on all the time in a squirrel’s body. All the muscles, nerves, and vital organs have their own email accounts plugged into the main service provider which is the brain.

We don’t have any problem with SPAM. We love SPAM.

Now I have simplified the whole process so that the average reader of the "nature news" can understand it—but it all boils down to food. When I think about my life on a daily basis the bottom line is this: I live to eat and eat to live. The only other thing I ever think about is myself not becoming food for some other meathead with me on the menu.

On severe winter days when the wind is shifting brutally cold air through the trees, I crawl into my leaf pile packed precariously around a naked branch and relax. My brain has a snooze button and I only wake up when my stomach starts emailing again.

Did you ever wonder where the term, "Living off the fat of the land" came from. It comes from squirrels. I eat constantly but I always save 10 percent of my earnings. That’s right. I know I’ll never see social security so I take care of number one. I turn 10 percent of my intake into fat.

When the winter wind blows my little body is as fat as my cheeks at a full bird feeder. Without that reserve I would be spending a lot more time at your bird feeder than either of us would care for.
--Hairy Houdini

Vote the Squirrelly Neighbor Party

If your future seems scary, vote for Hairy

I'm Hairy Houdini and I approve this mess

I have been considering running for office. I don’t know which one. I don’t think it makes much difference. I am not looking for recognition as a civic leader. I just want a nice, cushy job in some branch of government with a secure retirement.

I would have to be nuts to keep working my tail off gathering and saving, risking life and limb, day and night, day in and day out, through thick and thin, fighting the elements, and just barely making ends meet.

My friends say holding public office means tak- ing a lot of abuse. That is not a problem for me. I have been taking abuse from the time I opened my good eye. I will never forget the first time a lady caught me with my fingers in her feed and knocked on her picture window and called me things my mother said I should never say. It really bothered me that first time. But after about a week I never gave it another thought. I left my self-pride on that first bird feeder and never went back for it. Washington would be a cake-walk for me.

There will be a few things I will have to get used to though. As a John Q. Public squirrel, I have always had to stash my own cache of nuts away every late summer and fall and carefully withdraw them a few at a time all winter to survive. It seems a little odd to be able to just grab everyone else’s nuts anytime I want to.

When I first heard about political positions and how well they paid, I just wouldn’t believe it was true. But the more I looked into it, the more I could see this was a job fit for the King of Rodents—and that’s me. What a scam!

It’s too good to be true. Somebody slap me! Get this, if I’m elected and can fool most of the people most of the time, I will be able to retire with more nuts than a Georgia peanut farmer. Not only that, but let’s say down the road we have a drought and there are no nuts. It doesn’t matter. My cost-of-surviving increase continues to grow whether there’s nuts to cover it or not. Politicians are not stupid. They pay themselves first and then if there is anything left, they bury it and hope no one finds it until they’re in a position to double-dip a bit. That means they get two nuts for doing twice as much of nothing for half as long as doing nothing once or twice. I don’t want to miss the boat. I need your vote.

I am no Terrorist!

"A little to the right Lefty."

Have you ever wondered how much birdseed you could buy with 87 billion dollars? We are sending that whole pile of money to a country that doesn’t even have squirrels. It just doesn’t make sense to me. They are up to their sand piles in oil, a commodity the whole world is addicted to—and they need money from us?

If I had 87 billion clams I would buy a farm in Minnesota and plant sunflowers—then eat myself to death. I was well on my way to eating myself to death until the couple I live with found out that the government just gave another 87 billion dollars away. They stopped buying birdseed the very morning the news was aired on the Today Show.

If we knew we had to pay for all the damage we wouldn’t have used all those expensive missiles. I do a lot of damage but I never offer to replace anything. Just last week I gnawed a whole in a brand new plastic garbage can full of seed. Does it make any sense for me to go back now and fix that can? Heck no. If I help them it won’t matter. They still want to kill me.

I will never understand it. Let’s face it, I’m the cutest little thing on four feet. They should be pleased that I picked their feeder to call my home base. I could go anywhere. I heard them telling the neighbor the other day that I was a terrorist. They said I was using guerilla tactics to hit feeders and run. I do operate that way but not because I enjoy it—I’m forced into that behavior. The old woman has a stiff broom and Mr. Geritol has a slingshot—and they call ME the terrorist?

Why do they get to have WMD's (Weapons of Mean Desires) and think I should have my teeth pulled? I am on no global power trip. I don’t even think globally. I just want to be in control of this one backyard. I want to be master of my universe which is less than a half-acre of manicured lawn, delicious flower bulbs and an endless supply of black-oil sunflower seeds in a clear plastic, waterproof container. This would be utopia if I didn’t have to spend so much time in conflict over border disputes with this retired couple with too much time on their hands.
--Hairy Houdini

Nuts About Squirrels

Before old Bird Face takes all the credit I just want people to know that I wrote most of his new book, Nuts About Squirrels.
They say it takes one to know one and who would know more about squirrels than me? I was raised on corn and now I have a whole book full of it. If you want to know how to read a squirrel’s mind this is the book for you. It is a tell all book about squirrels. I will probably be blackballed and snowballed by all my squirrelly neighbors when they find out I have authored a book spilling the beans on how we operate. But I don’t care. I am sick and tired of all the vicious rumors that float around about the nasty things that squirrels do. My mother always said, you can’t throw acorns and live in a glass tree. Most of the stories you hear about squirrels is pure unadulterated fantasy. About the only thing we are guilty of would be hard work for little birdseed.
You talk to anyone that feeds birds. Not a one of them will tell you a bird story. They all tell squirrel stories. They have this false sense of accomplishment that they have baffled a squirrel. I’m here to tell you that will never happen. For every squirrel baffle there is a baffled squirrel. The truth is there are a hundred other furballs who will eat your seed for every hair brained one who can’t figure out how to get around some squirrelly engineering.
This book will teach you squirrel etiquette and I hope you will not only read and practice it but also tell your friends about it too.

Squirrel's View of Hot Pepper

Christmas is coming and I know a lot of you are getting Hot Pepper to keep furballs off your bird feeders. I would just like to say a few choice words to those of you using hot pepper powder in your bird feeders to keep me out— "Get A Life."

First of all, if you haven't figured it out—it doesn't work. I don't mind the stuff at all. Second, it may not be all that healthy for your birds. Sure, they have very undeveloped taste buds but what do you think it's doing to their short digestive system?

To test my theory, eat a jar of hot jalapena peppers while holding your nose so you don't taste them. Do it quickly. If you aren't dead in 12 hours, go ahead and feed your birds hot pepper. But don't count on my not showing up for seconds, thirds and fourths. I quickly develop a taste for any recipe that includes birdseed. I may spend a little more time at your birdbath, but you won't rid your life of me with an expensive additive.

You could take the funny money you are spending on that stuff and invest in additional seed to treat me with. Think about it. A 50-lb. bag of black oil sells for $9 to $13 in most areas. To treat 50-lbs. of seed with pepper powder you need $5 worth. That $5 could buy another 25-lbs. of seed for me.If it makes you feel better, I will sit on the feeder and breathe like a dragon. But let's not spend hard-earned money making each other miserable. You try the stuff and if it keeps one of my brother furballs from eating your seed, I'll eat your hat if you fill it with birdseed!

What are they going to think of next to keep me off the feeder. I finally figured that stupid merry-go-round feeder out. I discovered if I hold the perch down with my paw I can wear the battery out in ten minutes. That's not to say I don't enjoy spinning around on that expensive little furball flinging feeder. Squirrels are like Top Gun fighter pilots. We can take G-force stronger than a woodpeckers head bouncing back from a hardwood tree.You think landing on an aircraft carrier is difficult try jumping off your roof and hitting the icy tin roof of a bird feeder with pie tins strung up around it.

I can't believe so many people would trash up their yard with contraptions above and below their bird feeder. They go out and buy a hundred dollar work of art that stores seed for their little feather dusters, then paste a landfill of gadgets and contraptions all over it to keep a cute little fuzz-faced furball like me from eating a couple seeds now and then from it. I'm sure passersby must think the same thing I do when they see that mess. They must be saying, "those people have just too much time on their hands," because that is exactly what I say.

Save your money and time and spread a little holiday cheer my way. If you promise not to give me any hot pepper, I promise not to give you any hot tongue or cold shoulder in the New Year. Peace Brother! --Hairy Houdini

Ground Hog Day Fallacy

What’s with all the attention for those lazy whistle pigs. They are so low on the squirrel family tree, I don’t even consider them kissin’ cousins. They sleep all winter. I don’t mean hole up for a couple days if a blizzard blows in. I mean they actually sleep all winter. The myth about them waking up on February 2nd and looking for their shadow—give me a break. Some furball from Pennsylvania named Phil supposedly does that. If the truth were known somebody wakes him up kickin’ and screamin’. Why would he get up in the cold hard depth of winter and lie about the weather. Spring is not right around the corner in February. The way I figure it—if I still don’t have at least half my nuts left on February 2nd, I am going to have to spend twice as much of my time at your bird feeder in early spring. I don’t know who put woodchucks in the same category as squirrels. Have you seen the haircut on those dirt diggers. You could shine your boots with them. Not only that—they’re rude. When they are courting they whistle. Most females find that offensive. But when you live out here where I do, that’s all you hear in the springtime. Those pigs wakeup and start whistling. Go figure! --H. Houdini

Vote for Lower Birdseed Prices

Thank goodness for mid-term elections. I lost over a pound this summer from slim pickin’s. Everyone was putting all their money in the gas tank and leaving the bird feeder empty. Election pitches start hitting the airwaves and all of a sudden the gas price drops a buck and the feeder is full of sunflower seed again. I am really going to pig out this fall. Biologists think my hyper activity is caused from the onset of winter weather. WRONG! It has more to do with Social, Political and Economic change.
Humans are so stupid. I discovered this at a very young age when it was apparent to me that they couldn’t keep a little furball out of a bird feeder. It is so funny. They think gas prices are controlled by supply and demand. They don’t realize that as soon as the election is over the price of gas is going through the roof. It is pretty obvious to me. I’m gettin while the gettin’s good. While they are feeling generous with the seed I’m demanding supply. I’m filling my belly then my knothole.
I’m not going through fall with my rose-colored glasses on just to find them frosted over in late November when the feeder goes dry again.
I would fill my neighbor’s attic with seed again this year but it’s going to be cold in there. He won’t be able to heat the joint even when oil goes back to 80 bucks a barrel.
Personally, I’m voting for lower black-oil sunflower seed prices. I'm also looking at a lot of single cruises. I could spend the winter on a warm sunny cruise and I hear all you do is eat. No wonder they call them "Love Boats."


Hairy Houdini is a nationally syndicated columnist. His views are his alone and not necessarily those of The Dick E. Bird News. Except when he says nice stuff about us! --H. Houdini