The Squirrel Story

Out of all the things that can go wrong with our display, including blown out lights, loose connections, tripped circuit breakers, ground faults, radio problems, computer problems, etc. etc., the one thing that gives me the most trouble is the pesky squirrel.

The worst year for squirrel damage was 2007, where they had completely destroyed my years of work by the end of December. Apparently, these dimwit rodents think that anything hanging off a tree is food. So they bite the lights right off the string. This takes out the entire string, and usually also takes out all the strings downline from that one.

Now you would think that after getting a mouthful of plastic, tungsten, and broken glass that they would stop, but no, they go right down the line, rendering the string beyond repair. They bit off hundreds of individual lights and threw them on the ground.

In 2008, I spent an entire day trying to repair broken strings, soldering and patching like crazy. After a full day of this, I still had two trashbags of lights leftover that were just beyond repair. So I decided, never again. The best defense would be a good offense.