A moment I wish I’d caught on the videocamera.
A moment I wish I’d caught on the videocamera.

A moment I wish I’d caught on the videocamera.

My next-door neigh­bours have sev­er­al bird­feed­ers in their yard. Over Christ­mas they acquired a new one: a Squir­rel-Proof feed­er. It has a large bell-shaped hunk of bird seed covered by a broad, inver­ted cone of thin met­al which hangs from a chain wrapped in a cyl­in­der of plastic. This whole con­trap­tion hangs from a long branch of the severely pruned plumb tree. 


Today a fat grey squir­rel crawled along the branch and hung by its feet as it tried to fig­ure out how to get down to the cone. It grabbed onto the plastic cyl­in­der with its fore­paws and got its rear end down to join the front end. Then it hung on to the top of the cone with its rear paws as it tried to fig­ure out how to get round under­neath the cone to the delect­able seedy delights beneath.

Then it slipped.

It flew down the cone, off the edge and plummeted into the snow.

God I laughed.

Squir­rels: rats with a good PR Depart­ment. Any­time a squir­rel suf­fers humi­li­ation is a time for joy.