I heard a knock on my back door the other day. I opened it to find something even more obnoxious than people peddling religion door to door. Standing there tapping one foot on the porch floor and with one paw extended was one of the annoying gray squirrels that overpopulate our backyard.

I glanced out at the feeder in the yard and, of course, it was empty. Thus, the visit from the indignant squirrel, who was muttering something under his breath about how we humans were too lazy to keep the feeder filled like good hosts should.

“Cuse, me, Squirrely Pants, but when I purchased that feeder at the store, the package clearly identified it as a BIRD feeder, not a SQUIRREL feeder, so take a hike,” I told the furry nuisance.

He stomped off, his tail twitching in an extremely agitated manner. I watched him huddle with some of his squirrel buddies, who looked over their shoulders at me in disgust. One of them made an ugly gesture at me.

I had seriously been considering buying a BB gun and engaging in target practice in the direction of every squirrel I saw in our yard, but the others in my household looked at me in horror when I expressed those thoughts.

“You can’t shoot them,” they screamed. “They were here first.”

So were the “palmetto bugs” and spiders, but that doesn’t stop my housemates from screaming every time they see one and throwing shoes at them or pulverizing them with rolled up newspapers.

And cockroaches and spiders don’t flaunt their presence like squirrels. They scurry around in dark places. They certainly don’t eat as much as squirrels, who can easily devour a bag of bird seed in half a day while hanging upside down from the feeder. They should choke.

The poor birds don’t have a chance to enjoy the gourmet bird seed we buy that has the fruits and nuts in it. But it seems like the entire squirrel world is now making reservations to dine at the feeder, and I saw where they’d but a sign on it advertising the place had won the coveted Five Star Restaurant designation.

That won’t last, though, because squirrels aren’t known for their fine dining manners. In fact, when we were cutting the grass this past weekend, we kept finding pieces of chewed up black plastic on the ground and couldn’t figure out what they were at first. Closer inspection of our newly purchased bird feeder designed like a lighthouse revealed that the plastic caps at each feeding station had been chewed off. And the stupid squirrels didn’t stop there. They even chewed the plastic part that holds the food, so now the feeder no longer holds seeds. When I tried to fill it up, the seeds just poured out the bottom onto the ground.

Of course, I’ll go back to the store and buy a new, more expensive and supposedly “squirrel-proof” feeder, because I really love birds. And because I refuse to be defeated by a bunch of flea-infested rodent lookalikes who totally disgust me.

Forget BB guns. I’m thinking Ouzi.

T&D Region Editor Carol Barker can be reached by e-mail at cbarker@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5525.

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