It's come to this...

We declared war on the squirrels on our bird feeders. They are a huge menace and have twice now knocked my feeder down wasting tons of seed. Not to mention when they sit on the feeder they tip it sideways (see 2nd pic) dumping alot out too. We tried various scare tactics, to no avail, so we've resorted to shooting at them with our paintball gun. I shoot to scare, Ran shoots to hit. It deters them for a few hours, not sure if the same ones come back or if it's a new one each time but this was the last ditch effort. Everlea has gotten pretty good about notifying us when a "naughty squirrel" is descending on our feeders.



As I'm typing this, I looked over at the window and saw the chain swinging and sure enough one was starting headfirst towards the feeder, so I grabbed the PB marker (Ok so I'll be politically correct) and started firing. I so could have nailed the little bugger, he fell off and I had a very close, clear and easy shot on him, but I'm too much of a softie, and I'd be horrified if I actually wounded one (although I'm sure they would only get hurt if hit at very close range). He was lucky it wasn't Ran shooting at him, he wouldn't have fared as well. They are getting extremely aggravating though and we may have to resort to the feeder featured in this youtube video. It's called a yankee flipper, expensive, but might be worth it to save on seed and it would provide some backyard entertainment. :)



or I can invest in these books,

You can't read the full title of the 2nd book but it reads "Outwitting Squirrels: 101 Cunning Stratagems to Reduce Dramatically the Egregious Misappropriation of Seed from Your Birdfeeder by Squirrels" (SHEESH! lol)

When we were joking with someone about us shooting at the squirrels, I said we were slipping further into redneckdom and Ran replied "We aren't official rednecks unless we eat them after we shoot them."

Ok, so that's not going to happen... :)

...and really in case anyone right now is reading this horrified, no squirrels have yet been harmed in our backyard....but I probably will chuckle a bit if I see one coming back for more with spattered paint on him, cause I know we've gotten some close enough shots for that to happen!