Bye Bye Mr. Squirrel!

I had to take some action this morning. In order to control the bee population, I have had to temporarily change all of my vacuum feeders to saucer feeders. I did, however, leave one vacuum feeder up for the pair of orioles that are still coming onto the deck. The orioles do not seem to be able to feed out of the saucer feeders.

I was having to fill the vacuum feeder much more often than I thought should be necessary, so I watched from the window. Lo and behold, the squirrel was regularly coming and drinking the entire contents! Also, he was spilling a lot of sugar water all over the plants below, causing much extra bee activity.

I am not usually in favor of moving animals to a new location, as they have to find and learn a new territory. However, this is Los Angeles. It is not going to snow, so he will not be dependent on whatever he has been burying in my planters. It is definitely a male squirrel (I’ve looked), so he is not caring for young. He is also quite fat, probably from the high amounts of sugar he has been consuming. He has plenty of energy stored up in his fat cells to sustain him until he finds a new territory and food source, one which will undoubtedly be better for him. He also needs a water source, but there are lots of big homes around with sprinkler systems and swimming pools.

This morning I put some peanut butter bread into a Havaheart live animal cage trap and SNAP – caught him. He was released into the Santa Monica Mountains, where there are lots of oak trees with nice acorns. Bye, bye Mr. Squirrel! I hope you have a nice life. I can assure you that it will be much longer now that you are not be able to consume so much sugar water! And maybe next year I might actually be able to eat some figs off of my fig tree!

Carole Studio City, California