oh there's a new squirrel baffling town
buddy it's green and it's
nasty
[Music]
now i've made two very successful
squirrel baffles and my brains always
thinking of other designs and materials
i could use
i've seen some other designs using a two
liter pop bottle or soda bottle
and this has always been something i
wanted to use
now the diameter of these bottles around
four inches based on my other designs
i've found that at least
six inches is best to discourage a
squirrel's grasp
so they can't grab around that as well
so on the surface this shouldn't work
so i had an idea to use a distract and
confuse strategy
to discourage these very persistent
little rodents
my first try was not at all what i
planned
the idea was to cut the bottom off and
cut the sides into these
quarter inch strips these strips were
going to blow around in the wind
create a visual block but if the
squirrel came up to them they would be
hard to get around
hard to grasp and cause some confusion
or at least that's the theory
only the most determined squirrel would
get past this blockade
however as i cut those quarter inch
strips they start to curl inwards i
decided to keep going and see what they
look like
not quite what i envisioned it kind of
looks like
it could be easily overcome by the
squirrels and
yeah it's really quite weird but i
thought you know while i get another
bottle i thought i'll just put it out
and i just waited to see what would
happen with that one
surprisingly while i was on the watch
for the next few days the squirrels
didn't even try
my theory was was that these squirrels
that exist now are pretty much used to
my previous baffles and they know
they've
they can't do anything and they've given
up all hope now not satisfied by my
design i decided to try it differently
so taking a second bottle i tried to cut
it from the opposite side
i thought maybe this would promote the
plastic to curl the other way
i was right to some degree so actually
cutting it this way lessened the
tendency
for the plastic strips to curl inward
but it still wasn't quite what i wanted
then i had an aha moment essentially
these are like ribbons so
you know to curl a ribbon you take a
pair of scissors on it and you just kind
of do a little strip
so i grabbed a pair of scissors and
proceeded to curl i quickly learned that
gloves are definitely necessary as they
would
save my fingers from the plastic edges
now the plastic is a lot thicker than
the ribbons
so i had to use multiple passes to get
them to go in the right direction
and i didn't want to overdo it i just
kind of wanted them to kind of splay out
a little bit
or at least go straight down so not
perfect but a lot better so i decided to
let them sit
splayed out and see if that would help
for a couple days
and the result actually was pretty good
pretty good reversal of that curl
i was surprised at the results and uh
now all i had to do was test this
as you see here i had to make an
impromptu kind of pull for this feeder
and testing how well this holds up as
well
i'm pretty impressed all it took were
some zip ties my
umbrella stand and some scrap metal
poles
so far it works like a charm even on
those windy days
and suspending it up there i did use
some zip ties to hold it up
and a bit of duct tape just to try to
keep it as centered as possible
unfortunately the squirrels aren't as
active in the winter as they are
in the spring and summer i haven't had
any evidence of squirrels attacking the
feeder but honestly they just haven't
shown much interest in general
i really think those original squirrel
baffles were way too effective and they
learned that there's no point in wasting
their energy
they just simply look up every now and
then just to see if the birds are there
and wait for some seeds to get knocked
down so i think spring and summer will
be the true test to see how this design
holds up
in the meantime i'll keep the baffle up
and let everyone know if this works long
term or if it doesn't
if you have a more active squirrel
population maybe some people
watching this can try this design and
let me know in the comments below if it
worked for you or not
but right now nothing's been touching it
for two weeks so i think this is a
decent design
thanks for watching and if you like this
please hit that like button below
and i will see you in the next ladybug
[Music]
adventure
[Music]