April 28, 2017
Dear Everyone:
Someone recently suggested that maybe the reason I had a visitor, in the
form of a Very Large Mouse (also known as a VLM or
r-a-t) was because I
keep bird feeders
on my patio. Not really.
Consider a person who lives somewhere else in my complex.
He has a Very Expensive Vehicle (VEV), which he apparently never
drives. He just keeps it
stored in his carport and drives something less expensive, which he
parks in one of the open parking spaces.
One day, a few months ago, he checked his VEV and discovered that
it didn’t want to start.
When he looked under the hood, he found a flourishing rat’s nest on top
of the engine block. He even
sent the
Homeowner Association (HOA) a picture of the engine, with its
festive décor, along with a copy of the bill from the
Lexus dealer.
The HOA declined to pay for his repair work.
You can hardly blame his car troubles on my birdfeeders.
Also, I “sweep” the patio about every other day, using a small
leaf blower that
plugs into the electrical outlet.
Last month, “Jeannie” and I picked out a new stand especially designed
to hold birdfeeders. It even
allows you to decide how many arms you want it to have and to position
them in whatever manner works best for you.
The base of the stand is a metal circle just over two feet in
diameter.
It was suggested to me that I should get some “sand bags” to place on
the base, to keep the stand from tipping over if something too heavy
were to pull on it.
Unfortunately, canvas bags filled with sand did not quite fit the
esthetic I was going for.
Instead, I chose marble chips, which I easily found at the Big Orange
Hardware Warehouse Store. A
bag of marble chips weighs about 40 pounds and cost only about $5.00.
Then I got some flexible clear plastic saucers designed to go
under large potted plants and protect the floor.
Four “plates” of marble chips stationed around the edges of the base was
quite enough to hold down the stand.
Unfortunately, marble chips are not enough to stand up to an
aggressive leaf blower. One
little “vroom!” and the chips went skipping merrily across the patio and
under the fence. Oops.
Back to the drawing board.
Back to the Big Orange Hardware Warehouse Store.
This time I chose “Caribbean Beach Pebbles”, smooth light-colored
stones each a couple of inches across.
I placed a generous helping of these pebbles on top of the
remaining marble chips. They
also did a good job of holding the stand down, but the smaller ones were
still no match for the leaf blower.
Ultimately, I got a large bag of “river rocks”.
These were mostly the size of small potatoes.
They hardly budged when I pointed the leaf blower at them.
Success at last.
A day later, the contents of one whole saucer of river rocks had been
moved away from the stand and were positioned on the patio in a
haphazard arrangement. Huh?
I put them back. The
next day, they were out of their assigned positions again.
That afternoon, I heard a kind of rattling noise, like pebbles moving
about and went to take a look.
There was a
squirrel, industriously pushing the pebbles aside to get at the bird
seed that had fallen down between the rocks.
Seriously, this little guy was effectively bench-pressing about
one-quarter his own weight in stone.
And he wasn’t alone.
Another squirrel was lifting “boulders” out of his way on the other side
of the stand.
Not to be outdone, the
Mourning Doves
have gotten quite adept at shouldering pebbles along in their own quest
to reach that very best seed.
Technically, it’s the Doves that shovel the most seed out of the
feeders hanging from the stand and down onto the rocks below in the
first place.
This afternoon I went to the Smaller Green Hardware Warehouse Store and
picked up some smaller plastic saucers.
When I got home I found that the squirrels had once again
rearranged the rocks to their own satisfaction.
I moved all the rocks away, repositioned the stand, which was something
I had wanted to do anyway, then placed the smaller saucers along the
edges of the base. Filled
each saucer to, literally, overflowing with rocks, placing more rocks
along the base between the saucers.
Now there is plenty of free space in the center for critters to
gobble up fallen seed without having to move tiny mountains.
Will that work? We shall
see. Remember, this is not a
competition. It’s more like
a cooperative effort to find the right combination of
feng shui to keep
the stand sturdy and the squirrels and birds happy and well fed.
Like all of life, it’s a Work In Progress.
Love, as always,
Pete
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