Little Thief 2

Last year, I brought you the saga of our attempts to feed the birds. The birds, for the most part, got no food whatsoever. Instead, we were encouraging the squirrels that live in the trees on our property to settle in and get fat and lazy.

Hanging a birdfeeder on our trees seemed to be a bad idea, anyway. If we wanted to encourage birds, it wasn't going to work. It only encouraged squirrels, and we have fears that the squirrels may have gotten into our attic, so we certainly don't want to encourage them.

But then, we found this metal pole for hanging bird feeders on. The squirrels already live in the trees, so it's easy for them to get into the bird feeder hanging from the tree, but if it was on the metal pole, and not attached to a tree, maybe that would keep them off.

We put it out, and were quickly proved wrong, but we thought maybe it was because we'd put it too close to the trees, and the squirrels were jumping over from the branches. So, we moved it to the one spot in our yard that isn't close to any trees.

It didn't take long for the squirrels to prove to us they had no problem climbing the slick metal pole either. They have been emptying out the bird feeder with regularity in that spot too.

Maybe there is a pole we could install in the middle of the pool. I think that's probably the only way we could feed the birds without feeding the squirrels, and since that doesn't exist, I guess we need to give up.