How about something like a smaller version of a cattle fence, but put it on the inside of the wire for safety?
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The Red Menace?
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When I put powdered cayenne on my birdseed, the squirrels responded by knocking down the feeder and scattering the birdseed all over the lawn.
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So what’s that make the Metcalf Sniper attack? Squirrels with guns?
In central North Carolina, any uncovered chimney is subject to being recruited as a multi-story squirrel condo. At our previous home I discovered this by looking up at the house as I was leaving, and seeing a branch sticking up from the chimney. When I arrived home, there were two. I opened the fireplace flue and a few gallons of seed pods, nut shells, and leafy debris poured down. It took hours of poking pointed objects up into the flue to remove all of the crap, enough to fill a couple of shopping carts. That’s when I noticed that all of the other nearby houses had wire mesh caps installed over the chimney.
The vindictive little monsters followed us to our new place too. It already had a cap, but they were able to find a weak spot under the eaves and build a nest in our attic. I found out after I spent an entire day pulling a network cable through over a hundred feet of dusty, insulation filled curtain wall to reach the far end of the second floor. They waited a few months, then enacted their revenge. They went to the farthest end of that cable, a few inches from the wall plate and sliced it off with meticulous precision.
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Cayenne pepper didn’t bother the Squirrels in Texas at all. But then, I think I know who was responsible for all the tiny bottles of tabasco out by the peanut feeder.
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Lets face it, they were going to knock down that feeder anyway. They would much rather sit in a pile of food and munch away then do gymnastics to try to get at it. As it is, if they can fit in the bird feeder they will happily spend all day there unless the jays or the starlings get hungry, then it is time to leave.
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Ah, my mistake, what I should have said was: “as a layer of the insulation.” The lead does not directly touch the copper wire, it’s the middle of an insulator sandwich. And yes, I have very old phone lines.
Beginning more than a century ago, copper telephone wires were insulated with paper and wrapped in lead sheaths. In the 1950s, the phone industry started using plastic-insulated wire, recognizing that it could better withstand water.
How Verizon lets its copper network decay to force phone customers onto fiber | Ars Technica
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But skwurilz are kute !
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Sounds like the neighborhood where we lived before our present home. Except it was three human gangs that overlapped. You could tell something was going to happen by reading the spontaneous tagging.
By the way, I put Vaseline on the pole that holds my bird feeder. It’s funny to watch them trying to climb it. I suppose it’s humiliating for them, but psychological abuse is better than physical abuse.
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The vaseline is a great idea. I wish I had a tub large enough to cover my roof so the damn things stop jumping from the tree onto our roof as a quick getaway from invading the other’s territory. The thud skitter skitter followed by thud skitter skitter squreak squack at random times day and night is rather annoying.
I guess it is better than having pests inside the house. Thank goodness our chimney is blocked off.
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Until recently I had a room directly under a barely insulated steel roof. Not only did the slightest drizzle sound like one of those soothing noise machines, seagulls and crows would skrittle around up there five feet above my bed. I liked that a lot.
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Don’t count your chick…er, squirrels.
The ones in our neighborhood chewed through the rubber boots surrounding the vent pipes on my mom’s roof, dropping down alongside the chimney, skittering between floors over to the wall with the window with the fire escape well, and chewing away the siding as an escape route.
It took me two live captures and nine months before I figured out it wasn’t the chimney stack.
Needless to say, I replaced them with metal boots the next time around.
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