By Jim Schuh

Humans have been pretty good at dealing with things in Nature, but not totally successful. We’re fortunate to have had people interested in studying the natural world – they’re given us great information to help us live with animals and plants. But some in that world still manage to outwit humans – like squirrels.

These ingenious rodents regularly outmaneuver whatever clever barriers that humans erect to thwart them. Take bird feeders – squirrels usually manage to outfox us when we come up with ways to keep them off stations where our feathered friends take meals. But we humans really need to use our creative gifts to generate solutions that confound squirrels.

I recall watching a PBS program some years ago that detailed various methods of confounding squirrels that were challenging human ingenuity in keeping them off bird feeders. The British documentary detailed a most challenging course that involved obstacles of every kind. Squirrels spent days trying to overcome these hindrances. They worked by attacking each one, finally figuring out how to overcome it. In the end, the squirrels not only were successful at reaching food, but remembered solutions to beat every impediment and did so quickly.

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