Einstein and Me

“Rats with fluffy tails.” That’s how a city friend dismissed my fascination with squirrels. I have watched them for years cavorting in the overstory of the trees outside the windows of my study. Ha! What does he know?

Type, type, type, think, think, think, work, work, work, then I’ll look up from the computer screen— it took me awhile to realize that the world’s best gymnasts were performing right in front of me: hurling themselves from one branch to another, defying gravity running up and down trees, making hair pin turns while chasing each other or just changing their minds.

Squirrels have sharp, very mobile claws and reversible ankles. They can swivel their back feet while grabbing onto new surfaces, hence their incredible vertical agility. Even the daredevil rock climber in Free Solo needed three points of contact at every moment in his hair-raising ascent of El Capitan; squirrels need only two. They can go places humans only dream of: if Tarzan had been a squirrel the story might have worked better.

Yet it’s not their athleticism that I want to celebrate: it’s their intelligence. Ask anyone who has ever gotten into a battle over a birdfeeder with a squirrel. Like moi.

I had always wanted one of those black plastic seed tray bird feeders, sort of a giant upside down frisbee that sits high off the ground, providing a great view of the birds as they congregate. My wife bought me one for a recent birthday and we set it up in our yard. In several earlier skirmishes with squirrels around the hanging feeders on our deck, torpedo baffles—circular metal tubes— had solved the problem. So we installed one on the pole as an extra hedge against the squirrels.

All worked great. For awhile. Blue jays, gold finches, chickadees, purple finches, nuthatches, morning doves, sparrows, all congregated while we looked out over our breakfasts. Our seed tray was a feathered village well.

The problem is that squirrels are very observant. I could see them eying that birdfeeder as they prospected on the snowy ground for errant seeds. They soon seemed to realize where that bird seed originated. They walked around the tall pole, staring up at the seed tray, as if estimating what it would take to leap up onto it. I swear they were doing complex calculations: launch angle, trajectory, velocity at lift- off.

Still, as I looked out on the bucolic scene—birds of every feather enjoying the frisbee feeder, squirrels busy on the ground-- all seemed right with the world. I took secret pleasure at having devised a squirrel-proof solution. Let them know who’s boss! I was god in his heaven looking down with satisfaction at the world he had created.

Right. Until one day over breakfast, my wife glanced out at the yard. “Have you seen who’s in the birdfeeder?”

A Baltimore Oriole? Scarlet Tanager? The Bluebird of Happiness? There sat a squirrel right in the middle, birds gone, hogging all the birdseed, happy as an Olympic medalist on the podium. I jumped up from breakfast, ran out and chased him away. I had hardly sat down back at the table and there he was again.

We had an Einstein squirrel on our hands.

A sly, muscular Einstein. After I again chased him away, he reappeared from among the trees and seemed to be focusing on seeds along the ground, as if he had no interest in our birdfeeder. The blue jays, chickadees, nuthatches, returned to the feeder…Until…

Einstein got close enough to launch himself from the ground, where he bounced off the pole, twisting slightly, and using those amazing claws to get ahold of the lip of the feeder, he pulled himself up and over the top, like some movie hero climbing by his fingernails back onto a ledge. The birds flew away in a flurry of feathered protest, squawking.

This had to stop. I ran out and chased him away again! I swear he gave me a dirty look (“I’ll be back”) while I raised the feeder up a foot on the pole. Not even Super Squirrel could make that jump from the ground! I was sure of it.

Indeed, my wily opponent was confused. Venturing out from the trees, he stared up at the feeder, unsure what to do. Odds were too long for a ground launch. Tough luck, buddy. I settled down to my breakfast, keeping an eye on things out there. The birds settled in at the feeder.

But here’s the thing: squirrels are not just curious and intelligent, they are also relentless. Einstein went over to one of the deck chairs and got up on the metal arm, looking at the feeder from about fifteen feet away. I think he was estimating whether he could use the chair to make a successful leap, as he’d done once before to launch himself onto one of our feeders on the deck. Imagine: he was strategizing, using knowledge he’d learned when attacking our other feeders. After a few minutes studying the situation, he evidently decided he couldn’t do it, and he jumped down from the chair and resumed his ground prospecting.

Ha! Tough luck, squirrel! We returned to our breakfast.

Then from several feet away, Einstein took a running start, hurled himself up the pole, defying gravity. He bounced upward off the baffle this time, using that momentum to again grab the lip of the birdfeeder and pull himself back into it. Where he proceeded to gorge himself once again, looking directly at me through the deck window.

The birds, clearly traumatized, retreated to the high branches to watch the outcome of this struggle.

This was too much! I ran out the door like the wrath of god and chased him into the trees, almost tripping over a flat rock my wife had put at the end of her garden. An ineffectual god. He stared down at me from high in the trees. In the uppermost branches, the blue jays were particularly shrill in broadcasting their disdain as I retreated into the house.

Some squirrels lose interest when you chase them away. They find food somewhere else and like kids with a shiny object they go off on a different adventure. Not my studious, athletic, creative friend. He was not only smart, but he had a memory. He remembered exactly how he did it the last time. As soon as I was back at the table, he was back in the middle of the bird feeder, also chowing down. Keeping an eye on me.

We sat there, the two of us, eating our breakfasts, staring at each other. I’m sure he enjoyed his more than I did mine.

We needed a détente. I grabbed a handful of seeds from our pail at the door and again followed him into the stand of trees, where he again took residence and looked down at me.

Then I leaned down to that low rock and spread the seeds out on the flat top for him. Let him have a medal podium of his own, with birdseed, to enjoy his accomplishments and talents.

And we both finished our breakfasts in peace, while the birds returned to their feeder.

The blue jays had no comment.