Yesterday was the anniversary of the day we lost Edith, our LIttle Jail Bird. Here is another of her posts – one of my favorites!
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Jim’s comment “The squirrels around here seem to be unusually pesky” got me thinking about how much I hate squirrels. South Minneapolis squirrels seem to be especially hateable. People who say squirrels are “cute” either are crazy or they haven’t seen the squirrels in my neighborhood.
When I grew vegetables in my yard, it was an endless source of frustration to see tomatoes get almost to the point of perfect ripeness and then find it lying on the driveway with a squirrel bite taken out of it. The thought of eating a tomato that had been handled by one of those rodents deterred me from ever cutting off the bitten part; my compost pile was the only thing that benefitted from the squirrel leavings (and, actually, the compost pile didn’t benefit, either – see below).
I now only grow herbs and fruits and flowers in my yard. Squirrels like to dig in the planter boxes on the front porch or any freshly turned dirt and also do things like eat tulips off stems before they open their blooms. But at least they aren’t eating my food.
One time a squirrel got into my house. I’m not sure how…but you haven’t seen pure craziness until you’ve seen a squirrel dashing around your house at full speed.
We’ve all heard about how squirrels rob bird feeders of the bird food. If you have an open compost pile, to which you add food scraps, in your yard in south Mpls, you are basically operating a free restaurant for squirrels.
But the real reason I hate squirrels? They hate me. Here’s proof. Those of you who also live in the city of Mpls know that the big gray garbage bins the city provides us for our trash are pretty tough. But they’re not tough enough for south Mpls squirrels. Our diabolical neighborhood squirrels chewed a squirrel-sized hole in the lid of my trash bin. They would then go inside the bin and enjoy snacks
(this was before I composted most of my food scraps). Then, I out I came, blissfully unaware of any danger, with a bag of trash to put in the bin. I threw open the lid – and SHAZZZAAAMMM out flew anywhere from one to three squirrels in my face. They ran away, laughing hysterically at my scream, and plotting when they can do that again.
I learned to kick the trash bin several times and then stand back before I lifted the lid. After the squirrels escaped, I gave it another kick, then waited to make sure they were all gone before I carefully lifted the lid and tossed in the bag. But sometimes in my usual spacey way, I would forget to kick – and once again the squirrels would enjoy their dominance over me.
Any “cute” object or animal driving you crazy this week?
Trail Baboon 
Ernie the dachshund mix continues to be rude to Bruno the staffywawa. It’s noisy. It hurts Bruno’s feelings. We are scolding all the time.
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I’m trying to visualize a “staffywawa.”
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Chihuahua and Staffordshire terrier. The dam was a 7 lb Chihuahua. Bruno is 25 lb. We have no idea how any of that could have happened.
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Makes sense, now that you’ve explained it! Except for how it happened – and that poor female chihuahua!
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I found a spider in the sink, did my number with a deli container and cardboard to get him/her outside…
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The Birds are crazy for the past week.
The two females, Port and Arm, are chasing the male, Dart, constantly.
This is normal behavior for female budgies who become hormonal. When Dart pauses to rest, the females try to agressively mount him but he is not interested in sex. I have no interest in raising baby budgies. I’ve prepared a separate cage for Dart until the “ladies” settle down which could take a few more weeks. After having them for years, this is surprising behavior.
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Sounds like Middle School girls calling boys when my son was that age. Man, they were aggressive.
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I taught my son that resistance is NOT futile.
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It’s not an animal, or even a vegetable. Not a mineral either. It’s a fungus! I have really cute little white mushrooms popping up all over our neighborhood. I asked the MN Naturalists on fb to identify them, and I learned that they’re Conocybe apala, or milky caps. I read further and learned that they can be toxic or hallucinogenic if ingested. Maggie wants to eat them when we go out for our morning walk. It’s driving me crazy to have to be looking ahead of Maggie every second. She swerves from side to side, then around me, forcing me to switch the leash around, then she darts in front of me again, almost tripping me, as she hunts for anything she can put in her mouth. I hope she gets over the urge to eat foreign objects. She’s getting over her timidity, and other strange behaviors, which is reassuring. Last night she tried to eat a cigarette butt. This morning she made a lunge for one of those little mushrooms again. They wilt in the sun and are gone by noon. It’s just the early morning walk that is hard, but it does drive me nuts.
What a charming post – so nice to read something by our LJB! Thanks, VS!
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A day late, but maybe you’ll see this, Krista. Piper isn’t tempted by cigarette butts, his snack of choice is bunny poop! He’s convinced that the bunny’s have prepared a delectable charcuterie board purely for his enjoyment. This disgusts me, even though sources I don’t necessarily trust assure me that bunny poop is an all- natural, vegetarian comestible and not harmful to dogs. My solution wax to buy a mesh muzzle. We tell him it’s a mask, but it’s a muzzle. I have to explain frequently that he’s not vicious, just voracious. It doesn’t prevent him from experiencing the various scents he likes to take in and analyse, but it keeps us on task. He resists when I put it on him, but I’m the one with opposable thumbs, and always prevail! You and Maggie might benefit from a mask and at her young age, she might outgrow her urge to snack inappropriately and learn to enjoy the walks without foraging.
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Thanks, OC! Yes, bunny poop is candy for Maggie too. And there’s so much of it available!
I have considered a mask/muzzle. Maybe it’s time to consider it more firmly. Thank you!
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Love: “but I’m the one with opposable thumbs…”
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Rise and Shine, Baboons,
My son lives about a mile East of where LJB lived, and claims equally aggressive squirrels around the compost bins. He also displays chewed up barrels. I love Minneapolis’ progressive policies with compost, but talk about unintended consequences! Nobody saw that level of squirrel aggression developing out of that policy. I guess we now import predators to get the squirrels so we can create another invasive species a la Asian and Japanese Beetles.
McGee is not driving me crazy, but I may be driving him crazy. We installed our second wireless fence in the yard last week and I started training him. The training phase of this can be stressful, but it gives the dog a lot of freedom in the yard. He seems sensitive to the beeping and buzz-shock, so I turned down the level of activation. All went as expected, including when McGee dashed out of the driveway chasing another dog, then got buzzed. He yipped in surprise. What I did not expect was that he would race back into the driveway before I could de-activate the collar. He yipped again, then raced to the front door, wanting back into the house with the clear plan to never leave the house again. Now we are assigned the task of providing all kinds of positive experiences within the fence while he adapts to the system. So you will find me out in the yard waving toys and treats in front of him like a maniac.
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PS, I still miss Edith, all these years later.
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If Mitzi, now 7 months old, needs to go.outside in the middle of the night, she wakes me up, and I let her out to do her business. (This is happening fewer and fewer nights now.) When I let her in and she is back in bed with me she tries to cover my entire face, including my eyes, in kisses. I have to pull the blankets over my head to stop her. I am still dealing with my cold, and this weekend my left eye turned itchy, gummed up, red, and watery. No other family members who got this cold developed conjunctivitis. Today the doctor told me that it could be viral and a result of the cold, or bacterial. He gave me antibiotic eye drops in case it was the latter. I wonder if a germy little dog introduced some bacteria in my eye. My eye really likes the drops.
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Too hot for the cats to even think about mayhem.
Delightful to hear from ljb. Facebook still reminds me of her birthday, and that makes me smile.
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The squirrels are always a pain in our corner of the world, and today was no exception. Early this morning Husband spotted a red squirrel going after the bird feeder that hangs off of the second-story deck. Charlotte was after it in a flash, and the confused squirrel didn’t know what to do. So they raced around the teak table a few times before the squirrel finally dove off the deck. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened, and I’m terrified she’s going to catch one of them someday.
We have many of the same problems Edith described. We had to quit trying to grow tomatoes because the squirrels would pick them, take a bite, and leave them. We have a heavy-duty deck box where we store the sack of birdseed, and they’ve gnawed all the way around the edges of the lid (but haven’t gnawed through yet). They’re greedy and destructive, and no cute Beatrix Potter illustration can change my mind about them.
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Everybody in my neighborhood is complaining about the bunnies big time this year. Since Freya has come home, the bunnies have certainly figured out to make themselves scarce in our yard. And every other day or so I take Freya for a short walk in my next-door neighbor’s yard. They have a beautiful lush grass lawn that Freya likes to walk on and I like to think that we’re doing bunny patrol for them.
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It’s a long video, goes well beyond the poem I referenced, but I really like all of this.
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I agree, well worth listening to the whole thing. Thanks for posting, Linda, great stuff.
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A squirrel buddy from a few years ago. I called her Captain, she was quite bossy and ruled over the other squirrels in the yard. She became quite tame and would take peanuts from my hand. Sometimes she would actually jump onto my leg and cling to my jeans if I had peanuts. Dave, the next door neighbor, fed her, too. She had a good life.
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I have to confess, I find squirrels irresistible. I know they cause all kinds of havoc, but like raccoons, who are also adorable, they are charming creatures.
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I made peace with squirrels years ago. I have a one feeder that I actually refer to as the squirrel feeder. When you think about it, they’re pretty ingenious. The very epitome of survivalist.
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