Lessons Learned

At the beginning of the summer, I tried to instill in my nephew that he was now an adult ‘munk and had to take responsibility for his own winter supply of nuts and seeds. But being young and thinking he knew better, he spent the entire summer partying. Well, November rolled around and he thought he would just spent the winter with his parents only to find out they moved to Florida! They took their entire stockpile of seeds with them. He had an empty burrow all to himself.

My nephew inherited the family resourcefulness gene. Plan B was to empty a few bird feeders and be well stocked for the winter. What he didn’t take into consideration was our winter contingent of birds had arrived and every squirrel within a mile radius had descended on the feeders. He had fierce competition. He ran from feeder to feeder only to be chased off by bossy Blue Jays and plump squirrels. Even the small Chickadees dived bombed him. After three hours, he only managed to collect ten seeds. Mom who puts the bird feeders out, took pity on my poor nephew. She figured he had learned his lesson at this point. She setup a cinder block, filled it will seeds and covered it with a log. She left what she thought was an opening just big enough for him to squeeze through.

My nephew couldn't believe his good fortune.
He boosted “Its all mine!” I think he cursed himself with those words.

Rather than go through the effort of moving all the seeds to the security of a burrow,
he decided to moved into the cinder block.

The cinder block was in the middle of the birder feeding station
and all the various critters had their eyes on all of those seeds. 

 
My nephew seemed oblivious to the situation.

Sylvester, a glutinous squirrel from a neighboring community could smell those seeds.

My nephew finally comprehended the bad situation he was in.
At this point he had only one option, retreat!

 

Sylvester wanted those seeds.

He wiggled and squirmed his way through that narrow opening.

And finally reached the seeds.

A very defeated nephew came crawling up to my burrow looking for help.
I went to evaluate the situation.

 

I tried to reason with Sylvester and explain these weren’t his seeds.
All he did was make some snide remarks.

 

I needed some leverage in these negotiations. I shifted the log to make the entrance a wee bit smaller as Sylvester soon discovered to his dismay.

Sylvester quickly realized he had to apologize and make amends. He gave up the location of where he had buried his horde of seeds and nuts. We gathered up sufficient to replace all the seeds he had eaten.

We released him.

 

He quickly hopped on social media and warned his buddies
to stay away from crazy chipmunks at the Woodpile.