A Screening Process

It started with a single bird feeder. When ingenious squirrels figured out how to get to it and to the suet cage, I decided I’d cater to the masses and bought another bird feeder. Almost immediately our Douglas firs became frequented by a crow family of four, along with several beautiful Steller’s Jays. I decided to separately buy peanuts just for the squirrels, thinking they might abandon their ransacking of the bird food but instead, more squirrels showed up to take advantage of the buffet and I discovered that peanuts are the preferred food of Steller’s Jays and crows. I was mostly okay with feeding both birds and squirrels until one day a few weeks ago. I had left the glass part of the slider door open and pulled just the screen shut, to find a short time later a squirrel had chewed a large hole in the screen and was sitting inside, watching me nonchalantly while it feasted on the bag of peanuts I kept in that room. I ordered it to leave immediately and the door was re-screened with upgraded material. Two weeks later, the same thing happened. I swear the squirrel gave me a smirk and a little high five when I convinced it to vacate the room. We had the door re-screened yet again, with something stronger. I’m a slow learner but this time I moved the bag of peanuts into the garage and I close the glass door unless I’m in that room. My husband and I have re-screened windows and frankly, it’s a real pain to get the screening tight. I called around and, while Home Depot and Lowe’s and Ace offered to sell me the stuff to do it, I finally found a place to do it for us. In fact, it was the only place in all of north Seattle that did screening. We dropped the slider screen off at a place with a garage workshop and a few days later, had a professional looking job done by experts at a super reasonable price. The second time we were out-squirreled, those same screen people came to the house and even gave us a a “frequent flier” discount. I was grateful, though not happy to have that distinction. Waylon and Willie and others sang, “Don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys, Don’t let them pick guitars and drive them old trucks. Let them be doctors and lawyers and such.” In my opinion, encourage them to be plumbers and electricians and screen-fixers. I need those guys.

Photo courtesy Sid74 at Pixabay.com