Behold, the Beast

It's a picture of one of our backyard bird feeders.  With an unwelcome customer.

One of Joyce's great hopes when we came back from Indianapolis was to see a reincarnation of the flower beds. In the two years we were gone they deteriorated to weed patches and in the dreariness of winter she would look out the window and make plans for spring. In the meantime, she turned her attention to the one big bird feeder outside the dining room window. We loaded it up with sunflower seeds and hoped for the best.

Turned out the best we could do was to attract a few blue jays and fewer cardinals who didn't have sense enough to go south for the winter. But man, oh, man, did that big feeder attract squirrels.
Big ones. Small ones. gray ones. black ones. You name it - we had it. They loved \the sunflower seeds.

They would shinney up the pole the feeder was on. They would jump from the deck railing. I think some might have just fallen from the sky along with snow flakes. Reminded me of that song back in the hoot nanny days of that cat that came back - again and again - "that very same night".

Well winter struggled to an end and she put out another feeder. One with thistle seed for pretty little yellow birds. Another one with suet. And another. And another. and said, Let's just let the sunflower seed feeder empty out and we'll be rid of the squirrels. But we still wanted cardinals so she bought another sunflower seed feeder. That one was hung on a metal stake pole in the middle of the back yard. We saw a squirrel checking us out and we grinned at each other said, "Take that, you miserable critter."

I swear, that squirrel grinned  back at us. And it wasn't any time that he/she had mastered climbing a skinny steel pole. The picture proves the squirrel was able to do anything it set its mind to. Meanwhile, more and more feeders went up. Guess what? You're right: the squirrel found them and somehow let all the other squirrels in the neighborhood know. And once in a while 9they would let a bird take a bite or two. (Or would that be a beak-full or two?)

We tried baffles: no solution. We tried sticky fly paper. not sticky enough. One of our daughters suggested putting motor oil or grease on the pole. That wasn't any better.

Finally I found some deer/rabbit repellent in the garage. Desperate, I sprayed some of that around the big feeders. Voila: I haven't seen a squirrel in the past ten minutes. Maybe that solved the problem. However, I think there is another problem: the back yard stinks so bad that we can't spend much time sitting on the deck. Oh, well, you win a few and lose a few.

 

Here's looking atcha!

 

It started with CBS

My first job was as a movie projectionist at a local theater during World War Two -- but the veteran who had held the job before the war came back safely and reclaimed his job. It was that way with a lot of guys who held wartime jobs - and it was challenging for we who were just out of high school.



I had a real interest in motion picture work and found a job with RKO Radio Pictures in Albany, New York. I'd ride a commuter train back and forth every day and my work involved cleaning the office area first thing and then wrestling cans of film that came in from theaters or addressing and shipping films to theaters in the area. I think the job only lasted one week. The only significant thing during the week was a B-25 bomber crashing into the Empire State Building with a number of lives lost and a lot of damage to the building. Unlike the World Trade Center, the Empire State Building continues to loom over New York City - but the memory remains.



The next few months I helped install lockers in a new frozen food plant, and then went to work in a gas station. My sympathy is extended to anyone who has to work under a car in the wintertime - it can be miserable.



In January 1946 my father finagled another job for me - this one in New York City where he was working for a bank. Through a friend who knew somebody who knew somebody else, he got me an interview with CBS when its headquarters was at 485 Madison Avenue. I was in awe of the personal department and was even more thrilled when they said they would try me out as a page boy..............in the CBS newsroom. But what was a page?



Ever hear of a gofur? It was an overstated name for an errand boy. Go get me some coffee.

Go get me some pencils. And even 'Would you deliver this to my wife at such and such address." But I got to wear an honest to goodness page jacket with CBS letters that I could flaunt all over the building -and even out on the street if I had an errand to run somewhere in the city. There wasn't much money involved but I was part of one of the biggest radio networks in the world. Wowee!

And to top even that, I was working with biiiiiig names in news - Eric Severeid - Bob Trout -- and my boss was Edward R. Murrow. Who cared about salary -- it was more than I could wish for just to be associated with people like that. And to pass celebrities like Arthur Godfrey in the halls.

One day I got called into Mr. Murrow's office. He said that personnel was going to change.The radio news staff was going to be reduced - including me. However, he said that I could stay
with CBS if I was willing to make a move to a new section that was being formed at Grand Central Palace - a department to be called CBS Television News. I'd never heard of anything like that and asked, "What would you do if you were in my position?" He reminded me that I had no college, little other experience in any other work, and he said, "Well, you might apply for a job with a country newspaper." That's how my time with CBS ended and how I ended up going to a small weekly paper not far from home. But that's another story.

Meanwhile, I wonder where I'd be and how my life would have worked out had I taken that
job in experimental CBS television news.