Do you remember Pesky Squirrel?

It's hard to believe it's been over three years since our relationship with pesky squirrels began. You may remember that when we first moved here we set out to make our backyard a sanctuary for birds and the occasional chipmunk but a certain squirrel was eating all the food. Thus began our battle:

This squirrel is brash, I tell ya, brash!

At first, it was just a battle of wits. But then the guy made a hole in our porch screen and helped himself to an unopened bag of birdseed.

Seriously! A squirrel was bold enough to come INTO the house.  This squirrel just was not to be deterred.  This bird seed?  Must be like crack for squirrels!  It causes squirrels to commit bolder crimes.

I'm not sure when it "happened". I guess it didn't happen all at once. But sometime between then and now the squirrels have become part of our backyard party. I think it became a game that Jordan and I were winning. We cut back nearby trees so that there was not easy access to the feeders. It actually took two years for one of the squirrels to figure out how to get on the feeders. He was aided by some very rogue shrubs that grew up around the feeders. We had to give props to the little guy when we saw the acrobatics involved in the bird feeder dining.

One fella has gotten fairly proficient. But some of the others have tried and failed. They always seem to bounce back...so there's little to worry about. The birds have shown that they can manage to eat with a silly squirrel on the feeder. So we've kind of taken a let's not let it be too easy...but, we don't mind if one or two squirrels are able to outsmart the obstacle course to the feeder. See? What a difference a few years can make.