Looking out my window just the other day my attention was captivated by a little squirrel that daily visits the trees in my backyard. He's a curious little fellow to watch but his antics on that particular day were quite entertaining. He had discovered two little bird feeders I had hung and filled only the day before. He had, in fact, not only discovered them but he was determined to take his share of the booty. The problem being, just how does a squirrel avail himself of the delicacies contained in the dangling feeders?
Sitting in the large fork of the first tree, he carefully studies the task at hand. One can only imagine his thought processes but soon he makes his move. He scurries out on the limb from which the feeder hangs some 2 feet below. Not a problem, all one has to do is hang upside down from the limb by one's hind feet then carefully, hand over hand with the front feet, pull the feeder up to himself. Looks easy enough but perhaps he miscalculated the weight. He carefully pulls the feeder up about two or three inches and suddenly realizes he must either let it go or lose his grip on the tree. He scampers back to the fork in the trunk to study the situation once again. Maybe if he adjusts his hold on the limb a little bit, hangs on really tight, and works really fast, he can do it. Deciding it's worth another try, he returns to the limb just above the feeder, swings to the underside, secures his footing, and stretches down to begin pulling the feeder up. Still frustrated with his lack of success, he now hurries back down the limb, to the trunk and down to the ground. What he needs is a good look from underneath. Surely from this perspective he can find a better way to go about it.
Up the trunk, out on the limb, hanging upside down he knows pulling it to him is hopeless so monitoring his balance, getting his footing just right, holding his breath (sounds good anyway), he lunges for the feeder. As he hits the top of the feeder it swings wildly out of control, the seed begins to spill out to the ground and the squirrel in a great frenzy is grabbing at thin air. With a stroke of luck one front foot just catches the chain enough to keep from falling and he's pulled himself back to safety.
Not to be defeated, he relinquishes hope of nibbling on the delicacies of this feeder and turns his focus to the one on the second tree. This feeder hangs within about 9 inches of the trunk so he quickly finds that if he holds on real tight and stretches real hard, he can just reach the feeder. Precariously he pulls the feeder as close as he can and snatches a few seeds before he begins to loose his grip.
I just wonder if he thought it was all worth the effort. At any rate the old saying must be true - even for squirrels - Necessity is the mother of invention.
