More From Sam Whatley

One day my wife, Debi, and I realized we no longer had any pets. Over the years we had lost our two dogs and two horses. So we decided to try something different. Many of our neighbors attracted lots of hummingbirds to their feeders each summer. We wanted to do that too.

We bought a hummingbird feeder with a pint-sized glass jar that held the sugar-water mixture and hung it from a tree limb in our side yard. Very few hummingbirds ever found it, but the ants thought it was great.

When I broke the glass jar while cleaning it, I went back to the store to find a replacement. They did not have another one that size, but they had feeders for songbirds. One was advertised to be squirrel-proof. It had a metal roof, a long glass-sided box for the seeds, and a metal feeding trough with a perching rod under it. The squirrel-resistant part was a spring-loaded cap that clamped down over the metal teeth in the feeding trough if anything as heavy as a squirrel landed on it. I was fascinated.

I brought it home and hung it with wire from a tree branch about five feet from the ground. The squirrels loved it. They would scale down the feeder, hang upside down on the corner of the perch bar, and reach between the metal teeth in the feeding trough to scoop out birdseed by the handful.

I tried putting pepper on the bird seed; the squirrels did not blink. I replaced the wire hanger with thin fishing line; they slid down it like it was a pole. Finally, we found a solution.

We threaded the wire above the feeder through a large saucer-shaped baffler, two two-liter cola bottles, and another baffler. When the squirrels landed on the first baffler, they would fall the length of two large bottles, then hit the second baffler and fall to the ground. One experience of that fall, and the squirrels gave up.

But now I had another problem. The four squirrels glared from the fence at the robins, finches, and cardinals pecking on the bird feeder. To distract them, I decided to feed the squirrels something too. I started putting one peanut on each of our ten fence posts each morning. My fluffy-tailed friends devoured the peanuts. Gradually, I varied their diet with apple cores, acorns, and pecans. Now they run a few feet toward me when I walk into the yard.

So we have gone from failing to feed hummingbirds to treating songbirds and squirrels. We keep a birdbath filled with fresh water for all our wildlife friends. These little animals did not replace our love for horses and dogs, but the Lord has shown us that God’s beauty and grace are all around us in creatures great and small.