Whats up with hotels that charge $500 a night that don’t have a damn mini-fridge or wifi? If I wanted rustic, I’d get a flipping cabin in the woods.
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With hotels the more you pay, the less you get.
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Truth.
Does anyone have a bird feeder that has a cage around it to keep squirrels and large birds out? I bought a suet one and it is great for keeping the dam grackles out but also the littles that can fit inside the cage to eat just haven’t been using it much. I have seen some fly right in there, but sometimes they just try to eat from the outside cage and leave when they don’t figure it out. Is the answer to not use it? Or give it more time? It has probably only been up a couple weeks. My grackles are pigs and also pushy/mean and can easily eat 2 bricks of suet a day which gets expensive.
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No personal experience but I would suggest building an obstacle course (there is. 2.0 version that the same person just released).
Yes this is 20 minutes long. Yes it’s worth watching all of it.
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I’ve seen this one before and yes it is totally worth watching the trial and error and ingenuity of both humans and squirrels!
I’ve seen that, it’s great!
Spoilering for gross question that involves dead wildlife
You have been warned
What is a normal amount of dead squirrels to find in your backyard?! Just found the second in about ten days. Nothing visibly wrong with them that I can see.
I’ll contact our pest control company to see if they could be getting into the bait boxes for rats, which seems difficult but must be the most likely explanation.
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That would be a likely scenario. Pretty much anything a rat can fit into, a squirrel could.
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I can’t find the exact model I have, but I have a couple of tube feeders similar to this:
They’re expensive but it worked for us. It has weight-sensitive perches so that larger birds or squirrels can’t get at it. (Some medium sized birds, like red bellied woodpeckers, can perch on the outside and still eat, but they have to work for it.) We’ve been using it for almost a year and have not had any squirrel break-ins!
For suet feeders: it’s possible that it’s just the wrong time of year? Our nuthatches loved the suet feeder all winter but 1) it’s too hot for the suet to sit outside unspoiled now and 2) once springtime rolled around they started using the seed feeder instead.
Summary
I just remembered that you’d know for sure if the squirrels were bleeding from mouth/nose but had no visible injuries. That’s a tell-tale sign of anti-coagulant poisoning.
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I didn’t want to look closely, but it’s weird: I don’t think that was the case with either one? The pest company is coming to switch out bait boxes tomorrow, so I’ll ask them to check.
I also wasn’t sure if it was one of those, hidden surprises of being a homeowner thing that I just didn’t know about? Like yeah, everyone has to fix their own plumbing or have a good plumber to call, get a new HVAC every fifteen years, and remove three [redacted]s a month all summer, doesn’t everyone know that?
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It could be from natural causes, unless the pattern continues.
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I’ve never had any of these show up. Birds in chimneys and cat gifts. But nothing more.
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Thanks! My problem is more the jerk grackles than squirrels at this point. There are so many and they eat so much! I have the same seed feeders that you posted that the big birds can’t use that work well, it’s the suet that I’m trying to figure out now. Maybe I will just give it time, I feel like I had pretty birds at the suet last summer but maybe I’m wrong.
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Squirrels
I’ve never found a dead squirrel in the yard. Road kill, all the time.
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I also have never found one of the things you mention, but we have a built in removal service in the form of bobcats, bears, and probably raccoons.
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Ahh got it. I haven’t had problems with grackles and suet so far (they mostly feast on the seed that the smaller birds throw on the ground 
).
Has anything changed wrt tree cover or environment near your suet feeder? We had to try a couple locations before finding a place that the birds seemed to like.
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Nothing has changed, I just want the grackles to go away! I know it’s not going to happen, but they scare my little birds.
A consumer question:
Anyone have an ice cream maker and like it?
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