2024, animals, Food, home

Flaming Hot

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You all know I’m of two minds where the squirrels are concerned.  Honestly I don’t mind that when I feed the birds, I’m also feeding the squirrels; I just don’t like when the little rodents get piggy. 

Over the years I thought I had come to some balance – one feeder that I think of as the squirrel feeder and three others that I think of as for the birds.  Two of these feeders have little ledges for the birds can perch on but if a heavier squirrel tries to get on, it pulls down the outer part of the feeder to close up the holes.  The third has very small holes so the squirrels can’t get their noses or paws in.  I was feeling that we had finally achieved equilibrium – until I looked out the window and saw two squirrels shaking the little-holed feeder from side to side so that the seed was spilling out onto the ground.  Aaarrggghhh.

A few days later I was at Gertens to take my terrarium class and I was checking prices in the birdseed section when one of the associates asked me if I was finding what I wanted.  As I was still a bit raw about the squirrels, I made some off-hand remark about something the birds like but the squirrels don’t.  Her eyes lit up and she said “I have just the thing for you”.   She led me over to an section and showed me something called Flaming Hot Feast by the Mr. Bird company.  It has hot sauce in it and this gal explained that birds don’t register capsaicin but squirrels do. 

I was extremely skeptical but since I was still mad I thought I would at least try it.  I bought a small cylinder and because I wasn’t willing to risk more money, I didn’t even buy the cylinder holder; when I got home I jerry-rigged a holder and hung it up on one of the shepherds poles in the backyard.  I was amazed that it lived up to it’s name and hype.  Not only did the squirrels completely ignore it, the birds clearly loved it.  In fact it has led to an explosion of birds on all the feeders.  That first week when YA and I were sitting out back, I counted 35 birds at one point. 

I did eventually go get the cylinder holder and I’ve moved up to the larger cylinder as it’s a better per ounce price.  I also sourced a rain cover.  It’s like a little hat that sits above; rain is the only enemy of Flaming Hot Feast as it washes the “sticky” off and the cylinder kind of melts.  Luckily they sell FHF at Bachmans just down the street so I don’t have to go all the way to St. Paul for it.  I’ve sourced it online and have found it a bit cheaper but to get the better price you have to purchase at least 4 at a time and it hurts my pocketbook to spend that much money on birdseed at one time. Since I had initially jerry-rigged the cylinder holder I thought maybe I should made my own hot sauce for the feeder but knowing myself, this will be much easier.

So the squirrels are still getting fed in my backyard but for now, the birds are benefitting the most, which is more to my liking.  I am sure that with time, the squirrels will figure out a way to get around the Flaming Hot Feast but for the time being I’m happy.

What’s the last thing you “jerry-rigged”?

37 thoughts on “Flaming Hot”

  1. Actually, it’s “jury-rig”, often conflated with “jerry-built”.
    Jury-rig is a nautical term for making a repair using only the materials you have on hand. Jerry-built connotes something that has been haphazardly or incompetently constructed. Nobody knows who Jerry was.

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  2. My father was the king of fixing and rigging things with what he had on hand, and he taught me how to do it, too. When he died we moved his entire workshop here. Now I have to decide if I want to move the 2 dozen or so coffee cans full of washers, bolts, nuts, nails, screws, etc along with all his tools back to Luverne.

    Husband’s father couldn’t really fix anything. His dad’s brother was an engineer at a nuclear power plant in Ohio, and he couldn’t figure out how to put a blade back in his Atra razor. Scary!

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    1. So how often do one of you dip into one of those two dozen coffee tins? That’s the kind of question I am asking myself these days as I’m still trying to de-stuff my house.

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      2. I have coffee cans of various hardware parts and nuts and bolts- ones I have accumulated and ones I inherited from my dad. When I am fixing something and need a specific part it is almost always more efficient and time-saving to just go to the hardware store and get exactly what I need than to try to locate that part in the jumbles of mixed hardware.

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        1. Here’s the other thing-
          If I decide it makes no sense to archive all that miscellaneous hardware I’ve been storing in the basement and the garage, what would I do with it?

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        2. My father had a lot of copper tubing and stuff that he wanted to give to a young plumber just starting out. We gave it to our plumber after dad died.

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      1. Not yet, but there’s always a first time for everything. Maybe I could duct tape a bunch of those and market them to the “ratty-chic” crowd who thinks intentionally cutting and slashing a new pair of jeans is a hip fashion statement. 😉

        Chris

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        2. I saw a funny meme last week about duct tape. It said “you really only need two things in life, WD-40 and duct tape. If it doesn’t move, use the WD-40. If it does move, use the duct tape.”

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    2. I haven’t seen this one either although it makes me wonder if the squirrel could climb up the first pole why didn’t it just climb up the last pole?

      I won’t post them here cause they’re too long, but there are a couple of very funny videos done by Mark Rober, who set up an incredibly elaborate courses in his backyard during Covid to see how smart the squirrels were. Pretty darn smart.

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  5. The inside Birds often get jalapeños.
    I have a squirrel-proof set up for the outside birds that uses the cylinders. Rather expensive from Wild Birds Unlimited.
    Duct tape on the vacuum hose.

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  8. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    Right now my Ford Escape passenger side mirror is duct taped together after I backed out of the garage and clipped it off on the side of the garage. Sigh. The last time I did that must have been over 30 years ago when I learned that lesson the first time. Next Monday I have an appointment to repair it so the jury/jerry-rigging will go away. Lou’s caregiver tells me the duct tape looks “really ghetto.”

    Meanwhile, I am sick in bed today with some kind of upper respiratory bug that does not test as COVID. Lou’s caregiver also has it, so she is at home, too. I suspect this is the summer cold that deserves nothing but contempt.

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  9. In my childhood things were “cobbled together” with baling wire. We carried wire in the tractor and in the pickup. There was a roll in the barn and in the basement and a big full roll in the workshop. Things were very quickly permanently fixed, which is a rule I have tried to follow.
    Clyde

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