Among life’s great lessons, none is more critical to survival than knowing your enemy. Whether it’s dealing with a sociopathic terrorist or a toddler throwing a tantrum in the supermarket checkout lane, the best strategy is skillful manipulation. It may not be as viscerally gratifying as confrontation, but it works.
Which is why this spring I’ve learned to think like a bird.
It all started in November when a lovely black-and-white spotted woodpecker took up residence at our house. It pecked a hole in the stucco and apparently was planning to retire in the luxury and comfort of our roof insulation.
We shooed it away, covered the hole with heavy metallic tape and figured, ha-ha, we win.
Little did we know that diabolical little bird would spend the winter coordinating a full-scale assault.
The first attack came a few weeks ago, when bits of stucco appeared like snowflakes on the lawn and we noticed a different but just as tenacious bird disappearing into a newly excavated hole.
Then we walked around the house and found four more holes.
We tried not to panic.
We talked to the neighbors, and, sure enough, we weren’t the first to face the peril of a pack of persistent peckers.
One guy proposed we get up at 5 a.m. and stand watch with binoculars. Whenever a bird landed on the house, he said, nail it with a shot from a garden hose.
Others suggested putting plastic snakes in the holes in the stucco and a fake owl on the eaves. Or drenching the holes in Tabasco sauce or buying the most annoying wind chimes we could find.
And then there was the often-
mentioned final solution: pellet gun.
We decided to try the snake first, primarily because we already had one.
It was cleverly placed, with its green head peering out from the hole where one bird obviously was building a nest.
It worked. At least we thought it did.
There was no sign of the pesky pecker for almost 24 hours. But then it returned, defiantly pecking a new hole half an inch from the fake snake’s head.
We decided we needed expert help.
I called the Audubon Society.
Greater Denver executive director Susan Smith had heard the holes-in- the-house story dozens of times and was familiar with the old plastic snake routine.
So were the birds, she said, and unless we were willing to move it at least once a day, we’d better give it up.
Ditto for the phony owl.
The water-fight idea was a loser too, she said. Birds are patient creatures. They’d just wait for us to go to work and drill away. They can always outlast us.
And as for Tabasco, think about it: If birds had discriminating taste, would they really find manufactured stucco so appealing?
We had two choices, Smith said. The first was to welcome them.
This involved buying woodpecker nesting boxes and hanging them over the holes. That way we could watch the birds nest, see the chicks fledge and live in harmony with the avian world.
The problem was the ridiculousness factor. With birdhouses hanging randomly all over the house, that was bound to be over the top.
We chose option two.
This required getting inside a woodpecker’s head and scaring the guano out of it – harmlessly, of course.
Smith said when it comes to avian psychology, a well-placed mirror is the bird equivalent of Alfred Hitchcock.
Start by covering the holes in the stucco with metallic tape, she said. Then make mobiles out of fishing line and pieces of aluminum foil pie plates, and hang them near the holes.
Or she said we could go to a wild-bird supply store and buy holographic tape.
Now we were getting somewhere.
We bought a $7 roll of Mylar tape and hung strips near the holes in the stucco.
It’s been two weeks, and the woodpeckers haven’t been seen since.
So laugh all you want at the streamers hanging all over the house – we won this round.
And not a single shot was fired.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-820-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
