Not much snow, but many squirrels

Not our snow or yard but you get the idea.

Well, we got a bit of snow today, but certainly not the "up to six inches" they were predicting yesterday. When I woke up this morning, they had dropped that to "less than an inch of accumulation expected." There is still a bit of fine snow falling late morning, but less than an inch sounds a safe bet.

The bird feeder was being overrun by squirrels, and I sprayed the feeder and the nearby tree with a solution of hot pepper sauce, water and a bit of liquid detergent. This is supposed to be offensive to squirrels, though harmless, and it does not bother the birds at all. I don't know how long it will work, but the squirrels have stayed away and the birds are happily back on their perches, picking away at the seed.

The feeder sits on a tall four-by-four post that Tom encased in a section of aluminum drain pipe. Squirrels have never been able to climb that. When we put the feeder where it is eight years ago, there were no trees close enough for the squirrels to make the leap to the feeder. Tom planted some birches nearby, however, and they are now large enough to provide the necessary and adequate springboard.  He trimmed branches, hoping that would help, but the furry-tailed rodents are acrobatic little dudes and keep on jumping. Sometimes one will slide off the roof of the bird feeder and hit the ground, but most of the time, even if they slip and slide, they manage to grab hold of the wooden perch by a back paw and get back into the game.

Now Tom is thinking about moving the feeder closer to our dining room window. That should put it out of range of leaping squirrels and still allow us to see the birds.

On another note, temperatures are supposed to hit 40 [4.4 C] next week. Yay!  When I was with the Carmelites at Holy Hill, they always said the last big snow would come around the Feast of St. Joseph, March 19. I recall a big storm in early May, though, back in 1990 that did a lot of damage to trees that had already leafed out. And my mother assures me that when they came to East Lansing, Michigan for my June graduation in 1972, they saw snowflakes in the air when they got out of the camper the next morning.