Opinion Columnists
Email
Print
Eyeball to eyeball with the enemy
ADVERTISEMENT
Published: July 28, 2008
We're in the midst of a war.
A war that has been centuries in the making, that requires our dedication and commitment, our most ingenious ideas and our most advanced technology. Our foe is cunning, clever, patient and indefatigable.
I'm talking about the squirrel.
There is no intent here to denigrate the very real war on terror that our brave soldiers fight in Iraq, Afghanistan and too many other places in the world. But I also fight a more personal war daily in my side garden, the struggle over control of the bird feeders. The birds are the local populace, I'm the occupying power and the squirrels are those pesky insurgents.
I need a surge, because right now, I'm losing. And my goals aren't all that strategic. All I want to do is watch the birds eat.
As I write these words, I gaze out of my glassed-in-formerly screened-in porch, now my home office, onto a little sylvan setting: some sturdy trees, a small garden, my neighbor's fence.
Hanging off the limb of the tree directly in front of me is a brass-and-glass Victorian bird feeder, a moving-away gift from Los Angeles from friends who imagined me in just such a pastoral landscape, feathered creatures fluttering gently down to my feeder.
Little did they realize the curse they put on me. To be sure, the birds love the food. I go to a local bird store and buy what's advertised as an especially tasty seed and nut mix, and my offerings seem appreciated. My feeder is a pretty popular spot, the equivalent of the local diner during the morning coffee rush. I can spot cardinals, blue jays, wrens and doves every day as I check my e-mail and put off the rest of my work.
As when Marlon Brando's bike gang arrived in town in The Wild One, the illusion of avian serenity is quickly shattered when the squirrels pull up. Not that the birds mind their presence that much. But they quickly take wing when the squirrels, working as a team, go into action. Their routine by now is well practiced.
One scoots up the tree and eyeballs me, fully aware of the sturdy double-glass pane that separates him (or her, the sex seems irrelevant) from me. I don't want to offend any fans of the genus sciurus, but I cannot think of squirrels but for what they really are: rodents with furry tails, and not all that furry at that. They have beady rat eyes, and they use them to stare really, really hard at me.
While one squirrel is giving me the hairy eyeball, the other one is planning the lover's leap -- I call it that because it's at least a 4-foot horizontal leap from the tree to the feeder, and they certainly love to do it. Grasping onto the feeder in a spread-eagle position, the jumper's first move is to tilt it, spilling out the seeds to the three or four squirrel buddies loitering below.
By now I'm done rapping on the glass, and I'm on my way out the door of my office and onto the back porch to make my presence known. Of course it's too late, and once I even managed to lock myself out of my house. Squirrel declared the winner, by technical lock-out.
If this is what happens when I'm there, imagine what happens when I'm gone for the day. I come back home and the squirrel-proof top is off, of course, the feeder tilted at a grotesque angle on its hook, and the bottom scraped clean of seeds, nuts and even rust. These squirrels are thorough. All that's missing is a message scrawled on the glass that reads, Sorry We Missed You.
I looked up this problem on the Internet and the consensus seemed to be the squirrels are here to stay, deal with it and even think about putting out food for them along with the birds.
I'm sorry, there's such a thing as fraternizing with the enemy. I refuse to surrender, even if it does make me feel like John McCain.
When it comes right down to it, I'm really for the birds.
■ Dale Pollock, a former dean at the School of Filmmaking at the N.C. School of the Arts, now teaches film there.
Email
Print
ADVERTISEMENT
N.C. Politics
Federal Politics
See community events or add your own! Click here!
Advertisement
