zer0gee vs. saille in a squirrel fishing derby!




After reading saille's take on The Taking Tree, zer0gee thought it would be amusing to challenge her to a squirrel fishing derby. She accepted! Yay! The rules were simple - we "fish" for squirrels and see who was successful in "catching" them.

zer0gee's fishing attempt:

I read up a bit on what bait my quarry preferred, and chose dried corn on the cob smeared with peanut butter. I was going to fish for squirrels in my apartment complex, where they are plentiful, and dried corn is a solid staple food that was not readily available in our dumpsters. I decided to add peanut butter as an attractor, since dried corn doesn't smell all that appetizing on its own.

To provide entertainment value, and make it more like real fishing, I wanted to hang the bait from "fishlines" of clothesline rope from the eaves of my apartment balcony. I had seen photos of squirrels dangling merrily from such devices while they chowed down, and I could stay inside my apartment and take photos through the sliding glass door without scaring away my prey. I screwed eyebolts into the ends of the ears of corn, passed the rope through, and tied it in a loop. I sunk a couple of screw hooks in the wood of the eaves to hang them from - I figure I can put some plants out there in the spring anyway. After coating the cobs (and my hands) with peanut butter, I looped the rope over the hooks. This was a bit difficult - although I had a stepstool, I am only 5' 2" and had some trouble getting the bait hung. After several tries, I persevered. I needn't have bothered, as you will see.

With the lines baited and set, I kicked back with a cold one and waited for the squirrels to start nibbling. I didn't have to wait very long - after less than ten minutes, a good-sized squirrel showed up on the balcony. It spent some time checking things out cautiously, then jumped up onto the railing. As it scoped out the bait, another squirrel arrived. The first squirrel was absolutely furious, and began an earsplitting screeching and chattering - I have to imagine it was calling the other guy every squirrel name in the book. The first squirrel took a fighting stance, with its legs spread and firmly planted, its tail raised and teeth bared. The challenger backed down and retreated. This was amazing to watch and pretty hilarious. The winner then set about getting some free lunch.

Squirrels are crafty little beasts, and although I knew this going into the task, I hadn't anticipated that this jerk would simply climb up to the roof of the balcony, lean over, take the loop of rope off the screw hook with its paw, and drop it onto my balcony floor. But this is exactly what it did - took mere seconds, completely unanticipated and way too fast for me to photograph. He ate smugly for half an hour, then stretched out in the sun on the railing and took a nap.


saille's fishing attempt:

After unintended success at squirrel fishing in completing the Taking Tree, I was happy to try again and capture better photographic evidence of the local fearless park squirrels. I baked another batch of birdseed cookies, this time slightly more festive and a bit less creepy in nature, and went back to the same park where I had met with success previously. However, what I did not anticipate making a difference in my success or failure was that it had been a change of season and therefore available squirrel food supply since my accidental fishing attempt. Far fewer squirrels were out in the chill December wind, and those that were foraging went directly for buried acorns and bolted back to their drays as soon as they found sustenance. I can't say as I blamed them.

I set out two cookies close to the ground on longer lines than I had for birds. The first was placed as close as possible to the dray of the first squirrel I saw in the park. But after backing away and waiting with my camera out for nearly fifteen minutes, the squirrel, who had seen me set the bait, wouldn't budge from its home. I then set the second line in the exact tree where I had caught a squirrel before, in a much higher-squirrel-traffic area. One squirrel approached the cookie on the line, and went directly past it to uncover an acorn from the leaf litter and retreat to its dray. At this point, I began to think I would have had more success if I had added peanut butter as per zer0gee's bait, but I had intended to re-use what had worked and I was twenty minutes from my house or a decent grocery store and beginning to freeze. I waited a few more minutes, a good sixty feet away and down the hill, until a second squirrel passed up the same cookie for another buried acorn. Frozen after half an hour in the biting wind, I gave up and went home, defeated. The bastards taunted me all the way out of the park, and I have no doubt that something will eat the bait now that I'm gone (both originally-set cookies and ribbons from the Taking Tree were nowhere to be found).

I went home and consoled (and warmed) myself by drinking hot tea and fishing for a far more reliable subject: my own kitten.

Thus concludes the squirrel fishing derby:

zer0gee wins!