The story popped up today on the local feed that a burglary trio had just been arrested with the tools of their trade, hopefully accounting for the rash of daylight break-ins last week.
Which had given me extra cause for concern. That does help me feel a little better about yesterday’s guy.
Meantime.
You know how little kids like the box better than the toy? My husband saved a nifty little one from Christmas (thanks, Sam!) that a descendant of a Rubik’s cube had come in, and the best way I could describe it is that it looked like the upper part of a jazzed-up lighthouse, complete with a mirror on one of the sides and opening at the opposite. (Actually, that box in the link is the right-looking box, but Richard glancing at my screen mentions that his was a more complicated toy and, checking, Amazon doesn’t have it.)
Whichever. It is colorful and quite light. So. Yesterday (before All That) I got the bright idea to hang it by laceweight from the bottom of the birdfeeder: there would not be enough weight to set off the closing mechanism.
It took awhile for the birds to get used to it. It would be still, and they would fly tentatively in. Add momentum from lots of birds coming in for a landing and the thing would start swinging wildly below and they would all dash away.
Today they were less skittish about it. A junco even took a turn up there.
What I was hoping to do was to interrupt the squirrels’ path in their leap to the feeder.
What I hadn’t anticipated was the lack of squirrels. Not in the yard, much less on the patio. It felt oddly empty with no squirrels playing flip-flops with their tails or watching me to see what they could get away with. A gray one appeared on the fence and considered a moment but dove down towards the neighbors’ garden.
Today, a black one did finally graze a bit below the feeder when he got hungry enough, but he wasn’t having anything to do with the things he used to leap from. Wouldn’t even look up.
Like the rained-on-and-gone Margaret Thatcher cover, only with flashing light and sudden movements.
I think I’m on to something here.