Brainy, talented, determined: Clarice Snopes dines leisurely outside our window, despite the large sign that says FOR BIRDS ONLY.
After 5 years of this birdfeeder feeding only wild birds, this member of the ubiquitous and ever-expanding Snopes family that infests our yard finally figured out how to leap from the metal handrail to the outside screens of the living room windows, then climb, and finally leap to the birdfeeder, and begin feasting.
In Faulkner's trilogy that begins with "The Hamlet," a suspicious, shifty drifter (a rumor that he is a barn arsonist has arrived with him) named Flem Snopes arrives in Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi. A few months later, two of his cousins arrive, then four more cousins, then three more, then -- and for the next half-century, more and more Snopeses keep popping up in the county and reproducing everywhere, taking all the jobs, starting all sorts of new enterprises (some legal), scamming, predating and tricking the traditional residents, and having funny names like Eck and Wall (Wallstreet Panic Snopes) and Monty (Montgomery Ward Snopes, who returns from serving in France during World War One and opens Jefferson's first naughty French pornography store, until the sheriff raids it).
As our squirrels keep arriving and multiplying and scamming and predating us in a very similar fashion, I call them the Snopeses. S.W.M.B.O., who despises squirrels (they mess with her garden), named this spectacularly talented acrobat Clarice. In the three days since her success, a second Snopes squirrel who was watching Clarice has also mastered the convoluted Path To The Free Buffet.
If you scream at them from inside they house, they continue to dine leisurely and ignore us. You have to open the front door and step outside and start shouting before they'll agree to leap down from the birdfeeder. Birds won't go near the birdfeeder while the nasty , intimidating squirrels dine.
Swingers, that's what they are. Swingers.
Squirrels and most "ordinary" wild birds are amazingly smart creatures with sharp intellects, problem-solving skills, great memories, and unbelievable determination. To get past incredibly challenging barriers to a known cache of good-tasting food, they often work in pairs or teams, where one must press a lever or pull open a drawer to expose the treat, but the other team member gets to eat it. You can watch the amazing intellectual, logical and acrobatic feats of common birds and squirrels on a remarkable film, "Bird Brain of Britain" (1985) produced by BBC Bristol.
If there's a walnut or some peanuts at the end of the puzzle, maze or labyrinth, and one of these creatures knows it's there, these creatures can, and eventually will, solve every piece of the puzzle, unravel every trick and detour and dead end. And eat the walnut.
2 comments:
Somehow, I recall that you share a home with a Very Large Maine Coon Cat.
Shouldn't he be Worrying about Such Vile Beasties?
Two of them suffering sabrinucide at the paw of your Very Large Coon Cat would be a Great Inspiration to avoid the bird feeder.
Well, I forgot to mention -- besides determined and brilliant and acrobatic, these Snopeses are BRAZEN and BALLSY. They love to give the finger to humans and cats alike, they love to do their burglaries and robberies and thefts in full view of the public.
Although the birdfeeder dangling high outside the living room window is a fascinating Entertainment Center for the cats, when the cats are outside, they've never been able to get at the birdfeeder or its intended customers. So the Snopeses are just as safe, and love being able to dangle there and give the finger to Elmer or any cats watching.
But I know our cats, I know they'll be patiently waiting for a Snopes to make just one little careless mistake. Some days the squirrels eat the birdseed, some days the cats eat the squirrels.
Post a Comment