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Editor's note: We see a lot of books, some odder than others. Check here each month for some of the oddest.
If you spend much time gazing upon the delicate visitors to your backyard, you inevitably come to the question, "Why is it soothing to see small birds eat my birdseed, but irritating in the extreme to see a two-pound upside-down big fat squirrel glomming away?"
The ethics of such a question don't escape squirrel authority Bill Adler, Jr. "I have long felt that this is more than a matter of squirrels versus birds. Ultimately, both squirrels and birds will thrive, and neither really needs humans. (Though who would squirrels harass if we weren't here -- cats?) But I believe that our battle against squirrels must endure, because if we can't figure out a way to outwit squirrels, how can we ever expect to get a man or woman to Mars?"
Adler's Outwitting Squirrels is mostly for those of us who have moved beyond the larger moral questions of backyard haves and have nots. We just want the damn squirrels to leave our bird feeder alone.
This new second edition -- "Revised and Even Craftier" -- guarantees "101 Cunning Stratagems to Reduce Dramatically the Egregious Misappropriation of Seed from Your Birdfeeder by Squirrels."
There's a lot here about baffles, grease, placement, and birdfeeder style (his birdfeeder ratings are Consumer Reports worthy), and by the time you finish the book you actually can outwit a squirrel. But Adler never strays far from the larger philosophical questions. After the first edition of Outwitting Squirrels was published, he found to his astonishment that there are actually people who are prosquirrel.
"I think that a lot of prosquirrel people are actually quitters. They are tired of what they consider to be a losing battle; tired of constantly having to wave their arms back and forth; tired of throwing things; tired of building barriers out of sharp metals; tired of transporting squirrels across state lines; tired of digging moats. . . . A lot of former bird feeders turned prosquirrel would rather take the afternoon off and nap."
©1996, ProMotion, inc.