Until recently I didn’t think about L.A.’s squirrel population much.
Now the tiny, bushy-tailed terrorists and the havoc they bring to my backyard consume my every waking moment. It started last summer when I hooked up a bird feeder capable of recording and notifying me of visits — kind of like a Ring doorbell camera for birds. But the first visitor it recorded was dangling from its hind legs like a Squirrel du Soleil acrobat feasting on the bird seed.
At the time, I shrugged it off. After all, I reasoned, I’d altered the natural ecosystem, so what’s the harm? A year later, I can tell you exactly what the harm is: hundreds of dollars’ worth of damage and repairs to my high-tech bird buffet and an unhealthy all-hours preoccupation with squirrel abatement. The three-squirrel gang has managed to dash the entire bird feeder to bits by chewing through the wire by which it was hung (once), chewing through the cord that connects the solar roof to the camera (three different times) and feasting so often and with such abandon that filling the feeder became a daily (instead of monthly) thing.
To add insult to injury, each breach of the perimeter was brought to my attention immediately — no matter where I was — thanks to the app on my smartphone. It was like watching security camera footage of your own home being burgled. After the third power-cord repair and 100th squirrel-at-the-feeder alert, most people probably would have thrown in the towel and capitulated to the cr.