The Case of the Disappearing Peanuts

I have a love-hate relationship to squirrels. On the one hand, I’m amused by their antics and their intelligence. I saw a special on television once in which scientists in a laboratory put all sorts of complications between a group of squirrels and their food in a lab setting. The squirrels not only figured out each obstacle, including some complicated locking-type mechanisms, but they could deal with – and remember – up to 26 before they gave up. Now you know why that simple squirrel baffle under the bird feeder doesn’t work.

I’ve felt sorry for squirrels too. Growing up in Floral Park, my dad hated squirrels. He used to shoot them with his BB gun. Unfortunately, he missed a lot. We had a few squirrels winged by bullets but…well, let’s just say you’d know them when you saw them. Ugh. It gave me nightmares!

He hated squirrels ever since this happened. He told the story of how a squirrel got into his childhood home through the chimney while the family was away. They came home to a disaster. The panicked squirrel had tried to chew through the windowsills to get out of the house. Furniture was ruined, and the squirrel had even gotten into the kitchen pantry and destroyed bags of flour and sugar, throwing the detritus around the kitchen. From then on, his family declared a war against squirrels.

I’ve felt neutral to them for a while, feeling on the one hand that they are kind of pests. They never fail to get into my bird feeders and my current feeder has a cork in the bottom instead of the plastic plug that came with it because the darn things managed to eat through it in search of seed. On the other hand, they’re part of nature and deserve to live and eat and do whatever they do up in the trees.

John loves peanuts and bought a big sack of the salty ones in the shell over the winter. Actually he bought two sacks. One he ate right away, then he got sick of his peanuts, and so the second sack has been in the back of the pantry for…well, there was dust on it. He found it again, ate one peanut and spit it out. Tasted funny.

So he decided to start leaving them out for the wildlife.

Each night, he left seven out on the rock pile, under the bird feeder, and by the compost pile. We tried looking for tracks to see what ate them. Nothing. We tried peering out with binoculars. The resident Houdini removed the peanuts without so much as a wave of thanks.

The case of the disappearing peanuts had us stumped.

Until this morning…when I saw my bird feeder swinging wildly. Ah, finally, there was our guest. A skinny, young squirrel. I wonder how he figured out the bird feeder so fast? He’s a countified squirrel without the benefit of bird feeders. As far as I know, he’s never seen one except here.

He scampered off with big peanuts bulging from his cheeks, chased by another fellow.

From my desk chair in the office, I can glance out and watch their antics. I’ve decided to love their comical dance around the feeder. Besides, they’re taking the peanut shells with them!