Call it my Ralphie moment.
You know the scene in “A Christmas Story” in which Ralphie and Randy are in Higbee’s department store to see Santa? The mother tells the boys “the line’s not that long,” and then she and the Old Man move off to go shopping.
“Hey, kid,” some grumpy grownup snarls, “where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m going to see Santa,” Ralphie replies.
The grownup informs Ralphie “the line ends here” — it begins much farther back in the store. Ralphie realizes he and his brother are in for a lot longer wait.
On Black Friday, I wasn’t looking for the line to see Santa Claus, but I was looking to get in line to check out a few items at the Bass Pro Shop in Perrysburg, Ohio. I don’t usually make a big deal out of Black Friday myself, but on that day I took my nephew to Bass Pro to look for some gift items he could send to his dad in Germany with the U.S. Army.
We had found a handy kit bag and we planned to stuff it with a winter hat and glove combo, some nice, thick socks, and a bunch of snack items, like beef jerky and other goodies.
“Wow, Andrew, no lines at the registers,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“Hey!” an accusatory voice called out behind me. “Can he just cut ahead like that?!”
A Bass Pro employee came over. “Um, yeah, sir, the line begins at the back of the store.”
Employees were keeping a lane clear for shoppers to get through, stopping people in the checkout line well back from the counters, and then waving them ahead when a register was open.
The line twisted and turned to the back of the store, all the way around behind the game fish aquarium.
“Oh, no,” I said to myself.
My Ralphie moment.
FOR YEARS I had fought a losing battle to fend off the squirrels of Grossman Avenue from eating the bulk of the black oil sunflower seeds and suet cakes I leave out for the birds.
My first setup was a simple wrought-iron pole with a hook, from which I would hang a bird feeder. The suet-cake baskets I simply would hang on a nearby pine tree.
The tree seemed perfect because the white-breasted nuthatches liked to land higher on the trunk then work their way down to the baskets. A little brown creeper would land at the base of the tree and work its way up.
Various woodpeckers — downy, hairy and red-bellied — pretty much landed right at the baskets.
But if they wanted to peck delicious morsels from the suet cakes, they had to be quick. Very soon, the squirrels took over and gorged themselves into food comas, leaving nothing for the birds.
Meanwhile, the squirrels easily climbed the wrought-iron pole and would hang by their back feet, eating away at the sunflower seeds. I rigged up a baffle on the pole that kept the squirrels at bay for a while, but it was too loose and they eventually figured out how
to punch past it in running up the pole.
This year I tried something new. I built a platform feeder with a 2-foot by 2-foot piece of plywood and a short length of 2 by 4 that serves as a post for the suet baskets. I placed the rig on a tall length of 2-inch PVC pipe, which I didn’t think the squirrels could climb.
I was right.
Shortly after my feeder was in place I watched a squirrel as it went around the pole, looking up, trying to figure out how the heck it was going to get up to the platform. It suddenly jumped up and wrapped its legs around the pole, holding in place for a moment or two — then slowly slid to the ground, defeated.
Yes! I was jubilant.
Not only were the marauding squirrels thwarted, but the dark-eyed juncos and mourning doves, which would never land on the hanging feeder, can now alight on the platform to get at the seeds.
And don’t feel too sorry for the squirrels. The birds toss a surprising amount of seeds off the platform onto the ground, where the squirrels root and find their share.
Now, about that flock of pigeons that frequently takes over the platform…
(Jim Eckstrom is executive editor of the Olean Times Herald and Bradford Publishing Co. His email is jeckstrom@oleantimesherald.com.)
