Caught in the Act

I’ve gone through a lot of sugar water this summer feeding the humming birds. I love seeing them and we have probably 25-35 when all four of the feeders are full. The problem is that more than just the humming birds are taking advantage of the sugar water feeders now. I started noticing that the feeders were getting sort of chewed on and next thing I knew there was a squirrel or three out there every morning hanging upside down, tipping the feeders just so and slurping down the sugary goodness. 

A Daisy BB gun is a fair deterrent for that but won’t put the final exclamation point on the situation in a very satisfactory way… ie a dead squirrel. It does make them scurry off pretty rapidly. But apparently this particular squirrel is the Yoda of squirrels and is teaching the other little woodland creatures what’s up in the hood. The force seems to be with them.

The next thing I noticed was that not only where the squirrels apparently enjoying some refined nectar but they were also ramping things up to the next level and completely emptying all four feeders sometime between full dark and dawn.  Every morning those feeders, that were full when I went to bed were now empty and usually scattered across the ground in pieces which left an incredibly sticky, soured mess on the ground underneath. 

Between the butterflies, bees and black flies and the stench, something had to give. A 10 pound bag of sugar is about $13 too and those critters were sucking it down. 

Finally this weekend, Bryon put his trail camera on the tree. We had momentarily entertained the possibility of a barista bear slurping in a nice sugar frappe but we figured if that was the case he/she wouldn’t have left the feeders nicely disassembled but most likely completely destroyed. 

Bryon’s not so hidden camera finally revealed the culprit caught sticky handed.

Two nights ago, we set a live trap hoping to catch him and dispatch him because if he’s brazen enough to do this night after night, he’ll happily be willing to move on the main course of my chickens when the opportunity arises.  Of course he just rattled the trap, set it off with out getting caught and slurped out the sardines we had for bait, but later that night Bryon heard the final shoe (or feeder) drop and popped open the window and unloaded a 9mm round into him. He scurried off into the woods full of sugar water, sardines and lead.  

Hopefully that’s the last we’ll see of him.

Let that be a lesson to the Yoda Squirrel too.