Lunch Is On Us

After a long hiatus from feeding the birds in our back yard due to the unwelcome nightly visits and damage done by racoons, I decided to put my feeders back out this winter to give "birding" another try. They were slow to come but come they did, juncos, black capped chickadees, gold finches, common redpolls, sparrows and white breasted nuthatches...but nary a raccoon. So far so good.

We do however, have a pesty little squirrel eating our seed up and wrecking havoc with our feeders. Yesterday, after discovering yet another feeder destroyed, war was declared. That little bugger had to go!

While there are many ways to eliminate squirrels from your property, we opted for the humane way and forked over forty bucks for a "live" trap. We baited it with seed and waited. It wasn't long before we spotted our squirrel scampering into the cage, nabbing some seed and running back out to enjoy his snack before running back in for more. We had just about given up on the trap as garbage when the squirrel's luck ran out...we had him.

Unfortunately, we made the mistake of leaving our captive in the back yard until hubby was ready to take him on a road trip. When we looked out the window a short time later we found a large black cat we'd never seen before crouched about ten feet from the cage. By the time hubby made it to the cage the cat had already made its' move, the cage doors were open and neither the cat or the squirrel was in sight.

We reset the cage but there has been no sign of the squirrel. Perhaps he was so traumatized that he won't be back, but I expect that he was probably an easy meal for the cat...forty bucks for the trap...I guess you could say...lunch was on us!