I recently wrote about the Christmas Eve supper of assorted wild game we had for many years in my family. But there is another definition of the term that is a bit more noble. One that involves supper for the wild game itself.
While there’s plenty of food available for the squirrels and birds until the snow flies, we stand ready to fill the bird feeders and provide corn for the squirrels. I once kept those in a garbage can on our deck, making it handy and less messy to keep the feeders filled. After the lid to the metal garbage can disappeared in a high wind, I replaced the container with a plastic one that had a clamp to hold the lid firmly in place.
Imagine my surprise when, one late December morning, I took off the lid and came eye to eye with a plump squirrel sitting in the seeds and happily munching away. There was a ragged hole near the rim of the plastic lid; it didn’t seem to be big enough for a squirrel to get through, but it must have been, for the lid had been still securely locked in place. The squirrel scampered up a nearby oak tree where he sat watching as I filled the bird feeders and spiked several ears of corn firmly onto the row of nails along the deck railing. The next day was Christmas Eve and, in a fit of compassion, I didn’t replace the lid but left it lying beside the can. “Merry Christmas!” I told the naughty squirrel. The day after Christmas, I dragged the can and what was left of its contents onto the back porch and firmly shut the door.
Squirrels, being the feisty and determined little characters that they are, will usually prevail in our efforts to keep them from raiding the bird feeders. There have been a number of solutions and inventions suggested to thwart their efforts to get the goodies before the birds do, and some of the solutions can be entertaining for both the people who feed the creatures and the clever squirrels themselves. One of my brothers-in-law hung ears of corn on bungee cords suspended from tree branches. The squirrels puzzled over the challenge for a while until they grew brave enough to jump down and cling to the ear of corn which bobbed wildly on the elastic cords. The squirrels, always playful, seemed to enjoy the carnival ride nearly as much as they enjoyed the corn.
Another rather unexpected and potentially harmful occurrence developed when a bird feeder filled with cracked corn got wet during a February rain. My sister noticed several sparrows and other winter birds fluttering crazily on the ground, seemingly injured, and others crashing into the side of her garage while attempting to perch under the sheltering eaves. A little investigation revealed that, during the warm spell that accompanied that winter rain, the corn had begun to ferment and the bird feeder was offering up the equivalent of sour mash whiskey to all the birds visiting her yard. If the thieving squirrels that regularly raided the feeder were affected by the brew, it was hard to tell, as squirrels seem to be under the influence most of the time anyway.
I’ve been told, by bird experts, that the real benefit of providing winter feed for birds is not so much to the birds but to the people who enjoy watching them. Birds, it seems, are quite adept at finding sources of food and, if you abruptly stop providing those easy pickings for them, they will not go hungry, but simply scout around for other sources of things to eat. There’s a certain amount of comfort in that information, but we’d miss watching the equivalent of a flight breakfast at O’Hare as we sip our morning coffee on bright winter mornings.
At a time when we had both “inside” and “outside” dogs, I kept a bowl of dog food outside my back door. I sometimes wondered why that bowl emptied so much faster than the one in the kitchen, until I discovered two chipmunks busily transferring cheeks full of the nuggets into a nearby hole under the back steps. I figured they probably had about forty pounds of Dog Chow stashed for the winter so I stopped filling the bowl so often.