I bought A New Gun

The Squirrels Are Nervous


A couple of summers ago, when we first put our bird feeders out, we elected to use Safflower seed rather that a wild bird mix--thereby limiting the species of birds we attracted but also trying to not attract squirrels to our second story balcony.

It sounded good IN THEORY, and I'm happy to report that the scheme worked, until about six weeks ago.

Since that time, we've had an literal aerial circus of squirrels, leaping off of the roof and from adjacent trees; climbing the tabby walls, and apparently flying in from orbiting squirrel satellites to land on the patio and on the two feeders, thereby wrecking havoc on an almost hourly basis during daylight.

After chasing the little bastards around a dozen times a day and throwing ice cubes at them for a few weeks, on Saturday I went to Wall Mart and purchased some firepower.

A crappy little $28 crossman pellet/BB rifle (dang it, but the really good guns with a scope and 1000 fps muzzle velocity are over $100 now.)

I don't intend to kill anything, but using BB's and about two or three pumps, over the past day I've reduced the squirrel incursions by at LEAST 75%. I've managed to sting two or three in the butt as they retreated to the adjacent trees, so now their tactics involve running out of sight as soon as I open the sliding glass door.

There was a time in my life when I wouldn't settle for a BB and a few pumps of the handle, but would use a pellet and about ten lethal pumps.

I guess I'm getting mellow in my middle age...