A gardener has come up with a clever way to stop a squirrel from stealing bird food, which is a constant irritation to some homeowners.
Luckily, one frustrated Reddit user thinks they’ve found the answer and shared their trick to stop squirrels eating bird seed for others to try.
They announced that they had “vanquished” one naughty squirrel in their garden. They showed how they did it in a video, which revealed that they had attached a Slinky toy around the trunk of a tree.
The squirrel kept jumping onto the Slinky to try and get to the bird seed, but couldn’t climb further up, so it let go.
Even though the determined squirrel tried many times to climb the tree, it never reached the bird seed by the bird box placed on one of the branches – much to the gardener’s joy.
READ MORE: Gardening mistakes attracting squirrels to your garden – how to deter pest for good
This gardening trick was a nice surprise for fellow Reddit users who called it a “genius” move and shared their own struggles with wildlife.
One user said: “My Dad has been in a battle of wits with a squirrel for a couple of years now. He is yet to come out on top and has 3 broken bird feeders…”
Another shared: “It’ll just take a couple of days for him to twig that all he has to do is stand on the ground and gather down the spring until the tension bungees him right up to the feeder. Then you’ll have yourself a squirrel thrill ride with a nut concession at the end of it.”
Other folks on Reddit gave their best advice for stopping squirrels from pinching the birds’ snacks. Someone advised: “Spoke to a gentleman who’d been in a two-decade-long war with them, told me the easiest thing to do was just feed them separately on the other side of the garden, saved him so much grief and he always knows where they’ll be if he wants to set up a chair and verbally abuse them.”
One person wrote: “Just put chili flakes in the bird seed. Birds can’t taste it but squirrels can.”
And another agreed: “Add some seeds from jalapeno peppers into the seed mix. A few mouth scorchings will train the little tree rat to stay away.”
