Don’t tell them the Iron Lady is a paper tiger…
I mentioned in the Fall having set a chair just forward of under the birdfeeder and discovering my wild guess was correct: the squirrels suddenly refused to take a long leap sideways at it to knock the seed out if they thought a competitor might be able to just reach right up there with a tiny leap and beat them to it.
And when they come at it from below, the cover shuts down fast over the portals.
Over several months, though, they eventually learned to jump a bit sideways from the top of the chairback to get a swing going to it; they might not profit, but the ones below looking up hopefully at the pinata certainly did.
So I experimented.
Newspapers to try to mess with their grip blew off or got ignored after a day or two. But then.
Newsweek did a cover story on the Margaret Thatcher movie coming out; with their logo plastered in red across her forehead, Meryl Streep’s face covers the front page.
With her pearly whites showing in that smile. Prominently.
More than a week later, the little bushytails have finally decided it’s okay to jump to the seat again, but they absolutely will not look anywhere but down when they do. The cover is hanging down sideways by the spine, it has been rained on once, but it is still a human face and it is very clear they recognize that.
They will not rise up on their hind feet now on that seat: they will not expose their most tender parts to those teeth.