a letter from the "marketplace of ideas" column in the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers' newsletter, the institute, November 1997 issue:

POTENIAL IEEE MEMBER

To the Editor:

This story concerns my battle with a squirrel that deserves and honorary EE degree.

My tubular bird feeder was suspended in the middle of a 10-meter length of clothesline in order to make it difficult for squirrels to reach it.   This worked for a while, but they soon learned to go paw-over-paw along the line and hang upside down to eat from the access holes in the feeder.

My next escalation of the war was to tape lamp cord to the clothesline and hook one wire to the feeder lid and the other to the metal rim of the access hole assembly.   The cord was energized (through a ground fault interrupter) with 120 volts ac, with a 10K ohm, 5-watt resistor in series with the hot lead.

This kept them away for a few months, but then I found a squirrel hanging upside down and munching happily away.   He had chewed off both wires at their attachment points to the feeder!   This required that he:   a) recognize what was causing the problem; and b) chew the wires off in the right sequence, since he had to disconnect the lid lead to avoid getting zapped while working on the access hole lead.

With a new respect for squirrel IQ, I thought a bit and unleashed by ``Wunderwaffen.''   This consists of three meters of No 14 AWG nonmetallic cable, with the sheath and ground lead removed and the wires twisted together.   The black and white leads are alternately bared for about 25 centimeters, with overlaps of about 5 centimeters where both are insulated.   The feeder is suspended from the middle of the twisted pair, with the bail and lid in contact with one another.

This has stumped our bushy-tailed Steinmetz (Squirrelmetz); he can't shinny along the cable without having his front paws on one bare wire and his back paws on the other   My respect for him hasn't diminished; I don't see how I could beat this one, given a squirrel's resources and physical equipment.

I just hope he doesn't find any loose pieces of bare wire in his travels around the yard.

Cliff Bader
West Chester, Penn., USA