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Posted by Grover Larkins on 16:43:26 10/08/12
In Reply to: Backyard FOS Male Painted Bunting/Squirrels posted by Jeanette
Ahhhh, yes, the bushy tailed rats :) How to avoid them....
One good way is an electric fence charger, a 2' square piece of 3/4" exterior grade plywood, a dozen screw-in electric fence insulators and about 30-50' of electric fence (bare) wire.
Screw the insulators into the plywood at 4" intervals on opposite sides of the top of the plywood. Mount a pipe mount to the center of the other surface of the plywood -- this is what you will mount on a pipe going into the ground as a support to prevent feline predation.
Once you have the insulators mounted run bare wire from one insulator on the left end to the insulator on the right end, skip an insulator row and then come back on the 3rd insulator row, skip a row and run it over on the 5th row of insulators. These wires should be taut or tightly strung so they don't rest on the plywood. Now cut the wire. This is 1/2 of the electrical "fence" system.
Repeat the above with the even numbered rows of insulators taking care to NOT allow this wire to contact the wire strung on the odd rows. When this is done you have your other 1/2 of the electrical fence system.
Now mount the plywood onto the pipe in the ground, add bird food on the top of the plywood and connect the fence charger to the two wires, run an extension cord into the house (don't connect it to the house wiring yet but DO plug in the charger to the extension cord).
Make a number of pieces of cardboard squares about 8"x10" with large numbers from 1 to 10 on them, enough that everyone can have a set. Now it is time to wait for a squirrel.
Birds can come and go as they won't stand on the wires that are 4" apart and their feathers are not conductive. Squirrels on the other hand... when one gets up on the feeder, just plug in that extension cord to the power and wait for the inevitable. When the squirrel gets "zapped" it will perform an olympic quality acrobatic jump.... Now, about those scorecards... you can figure it out. ;)
BTW -- IF a cat gets up there; yep I've had that happen; this will convince them to vanish since it totally destroys their cool.
It is entertaining, not harmful to the birds, and IF set to an appropriate level it wont hurt the squirrel -- they just think that they have been "grabbed" and since they repose high on the list of "tasty" snacks for most predators they freak out!
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