Picking Winners

I put up a bird feeder a few weeks ago. I only got a fleeting glimpse of one bird sampling what I thought were bird delicacies. No other birds came again. We thought that the seeds were old and tasted bad. I dumped that seed on the ground and put in new seed that was supposed to attract birds of the sort I saw hiding in the bushes not far from the feeder. I never saw birds, but food was disappearing. I thought it might be deer, but there were no tracks or scat.  A mystery. Maybe I could hang the feeder from a higher branch in a different tree and rig up a hoist system to raise and lower it so I wouldn’t have to climb on a ladder to fill it. Last year, my buddy Ron up the street fell off a ladder and did severe damage to his leg. I’m a little wary of needing both hands to accomplish a task on a ladder these days

Earlier today I watched my tree from a little farther off than usual.  I was very quiet and hid behind a car. I saw the culprit! It was a gray squirrel. There has never in all the years I’ve lived here been a gray squirrel in the yard. I’ve seen chipmunks and an occasional red squirrel, but no grays.  I stepped out from my hiding place and it took off like a rocket for the woods seventy or eighty feet away.

So now I’m staring at the tree for the second time today. I glanced at it four or five other times over the course of the day and each time I tried to formulate a strategy for ridding myself of the squirrel. I have a cone from when Auggie our dog hurt his leg and I thought I could put it around the branch to block the looter’s access. Patty said we could get a metal post the squirrel couldn’t climb. I heard the malamutes across the street howl a few moments ago. It is wolf-like and when I walk in the dark it is jarring. But there are no wolves here. There haven’t been a in a couple of hundred years. People decided to rid the area of them.

So now I’m standing here thinking of how I put out seed for birds and am begrudging other animals a taste. We, people in general not just Patty and me, put out food. Raccoons and skunks need not apply. Mice are vermin. Chipmunks get peanuts.

Humans pick the winners. We got rid of all the large predators in most of our country. We want to save tigers in Asia even though people in India are killed on a regular basis. One tiger has killed and eaten ten people in the past year.

Closer to home, the bounty on coyotes was passed by the Pennsylvania house and awaits debate in the state senate. It would pay a bounty of twenty-five dollars for any coyote pelt brought in to a game commission office. The last time that strategy was used the coyote population went to zero. Rabbits and ground hog populations swelled and did far more agricultural damage than the coyotes ever could by eating farm animals.

We really aren’t smart enough to decide who wins and who loses in the animal kingdom. I guess I’ll move the feeder someplace the squirrels and deer can get what falls on the ground and the birds can get what’s in the feeder. Maybe if I put something out for the squirrels and the deer they won’t want the birdseed. We throw apples out at work all the time. I think I’ll start bringing them home for the animals. Honestly, I would really like not to attract skunks. I’ll try not to put stuff they like near the house.