I live very close to a nature preserve. We have plenty of squirrels, and they are actually quite intelligent overcoming quite a few plans to 'out-smart' them.

Fortunately, my house doesn't have an attic, but they did make a hole in my screen porch. I don't keep the canister of bird feed in the porch anymore. It's sealed and squirrel proof, but I guess they can smell the seeds or something like that.

Being next to the preserve, I have a red shouldered hawk that likes to perch on my trees and fence, but it doesn't eat enough squirrels, a 6' long coachwhip snake that lives under my house, but reptiles seldom need to eat. Leilani feeds the rabbits (they will eat popcorn out of her hands) but they are no problem. I've also seen Sand Hill Cranes, I can walk up to them and they are almost tall enough to look straight in the eye. They have no fear of humans. I've seen bobcats, fox, coral snakes, gopher tortoises, ibis, egrets, and dozens of species of small birds in my back yard too.

We have a bird feeder, and we had one of those plastic squirrel baffles under the feeder. The squirrels couldn't climb past it, so they gnawed a channel from the edge halfway to the post so they could just climb through the slot they made. We have steel ones now.

We hung it from a tree with the baffle on top, they gnawed through the branch bringing the branch, feeder and squirrel down to the ground. We were lucky enough to watch that happen.

They are very entertaining but they are indeed pests.

Their biggest defense is that they are so darn cute.

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