I created a monster.

I innocently set out to attract to my backyard a few sap suckers, gossamer-winged whatitsnames and chirping chit-chats. Maybe a beautiful cardinal or a hungry red humdinger would be enticed to stop by at the Cecil place.

It was just a danged simple bird feeder.

But once I got it all in place and started my bird feeding operation, everything fell apart.

I muscled a 4x4 post in a hole about 4 feet deep to give the feeder strength in the event my backyard happened to be in the ancient flyway and a gaggle of pterodactyls from the distant past lumbered in.

I bought two nice bird feeders made of plastic and designed to look like multi-storied Chinese pagodas.

Birdseed was next, and to help the agricultural economy along I bought $40 of sunflower seeds and some sacks of shiny, glistening black thistle seed.

I thought the sunflower seeds would last me a month, and would help me figure out how much I needed for the entire year. The weed seed was thrown in as a sort of bird dessert.

I couldn’t believe the price of that stuff. They should figure out how to embed it in jewelry.

The printing on the bag said it came from India. It isn’t sold by the pound. It’s sold by the gasp.

I loaded the seeds into my pagodas that were decorated with Chinese markings and six little windows with perches that were delicately engineered for little birds so they could enjoy their sumptuous repasts. Within an hour my pagoda had been discovered.

Sparrows that normally hang out eating low-hanging fruit down at Sexauer’s old elevator on Sixth Avenue by the railroad tracks, were flittering in to enjoy thistle and sunflower seed. They arrived in flocks, so the seeds were apparently a sparrow’s version of Omaha steaks.

Word got around in the world of backyard critters, too. It wasn’t long before determined squirrels were shinnying up the 4x4 to belly up to my free food.

They couldn’t get enough to eat through the pagoda windows, so they used their sharp teeth to enlarge the windows until seed gushed forth onto my lawn in great profusion. There goda my pagodas.

To protect my damaged pagodas somewhat I bought a cute little squirrel feeder, thinking it would keep the squirrels off the pagodas. The feeder had a little table with a nail in the middle on which to impale an ear of corn, and a little wooden chair for the squirrel to sit on while eating, which was sorta ridiculous, but I was ready to try anything.        

I also bought a 6 1/2 pound bag of corn on the cob that some enterprising farmer down in Clinton, Iowa, packaged up to sell to suckers like me. The bag had a price of $4.49.

The squirrels went through that corn like 60 – in a day, for cripes sake. Interestingly, they ate only the root end of each kernel, leaving a U-shaped bit of corn piling up in my grass.

While the picky squirrels were spitting out most of the kernels, some ugly looking birds of prey had discovered the feast below the squirrel’s banquet table. I think they were turkey vultures, but they could have been pterodactyls.

That did it.

I sold the ridiculous squirrel table to the second-hand store that soon went out of business. A friend got the 4x4 post for a song. Getting rid of the thistle seed from India was the most difficult.

So we’ve been mixing it in with our servings of wild rice whenever we have company for dinner.

Guests seemed to like it, so I figure in about a year my bird feeder investment will finally balance out.

If you’d like to comment, email the author at cfcecil@swiftel.net.