Squirrel Picnic!

Everybody heard of a "DIY" project? That stands for Do It Yourself. My friend got a Birthday gift that needed some extra crafting. But that's considered part of the gift, because we all know how cool it is to work on something yourself.

The gift arrived in two different boxes. We were told to wait until both boxes arrived before we opened them. There was an agonizing 6-day delay between the first box's arrival and the second. We waited to open the boxes, but Amazon does this cool thing where they wrap the thing inside the box in a gift bag anyway. Seems much more like a present. Yay Amazon!

Our friend was a little worried that the wait for the boxes was going to over-sell the gift's hype. It was not that serious or expensive of a gift. Just a thing overheard in a conversation that they thought we'd enjoy. The first box was kind of heavy... what could it be?

It's a Squirrel Picnic Table! Along with a ton of special corn for them to snack on! Our friend had mentioned he put a ledge on his fence with such corn, see... we're not the only ones entertained by those cute little squirrels. We don't have a fence outside the apartment, so we had to make one! Okay, not the whole fence, just a pole of some kind to attach the picnic table to.

A board of wood is not very expensive, even the special-treated type for Outdoor Projects. I can understand why he thought it was not necessary to send us one of these. Shipping costs would be a lot more than the actual thing. Plus we got an excuse to explore the hardware store, who doesn't like that?!

Quest success! We could have bought some wood stain and brushes, But let's not get carried away. If you want to go that far, explore the hardware store some more.

Without a full-on garage type of dwelling, it was a little lucky that we owned a saw. This was somewhat of an antique that we picked up from an estate sale at "The Cool House" several years ago. While there was minor concern about the durability of this saw, as an object, we thought it's spirit would appreciate the "exercise" of being used after sitting idol for so long.

Is it strange to think about items as having a sort-of "spirit"? This saw was happily chewing up this wood. If you didn't know, we wanted to make one of the ends pointy so we could more easily jam it into the ground.

We knew this would be the worst part of the project. Like, physically. It took a few minutes to get all the way through. But, this particular saw was ultra comfy with it's amazing handle shape. One side down, one to go!

Whew! This is a lot of exercise! It's good though. I'm not really complaining, just pointing it out. Mostly just felt awkward due to our lame chair-as-a-worktable, sitting-on-the-ground setup we had going on.

Alright! Finally done! Looks like the side angles matched but one was a little higher. Should we have bothered to measure and mark the wood first? It's already a point, so... that's cool. No need to get obsessed with making it perfect.

There was a little bit of sandpaper to be used. Maybe they could have smoothed out the board for us at the hardware store? Is that something they do? Eh, we had some extra sandpaper from somewhere before, so no big deal.

A quick brushing of the sides and this thing was a lot more smooth to work with. After we did this, we realized this should have been step #1 before we sawed off the corners. That would have been much nicer to hold while sawing.

The screws that came with the picnic table were deeper than the wood combo. I mentioned before that we don't have the classic "garage" resources? Our toolbox did have a few extra screws to look through but nothing close to this. While we did briefly think about going on another Quest, we were more eager to just get this thing up and maybe not worry about that now.

Our power screwdriver had some drill bit attachments. Even though we don't have a classic garage, we still have a rather impressive amount of tools at our disposal.

Drilling through the holes in the picnic table backing, we are sure to make this thing perfectly aligned with the pole. If there are any kids reading, I guess I should say something like "get your parent's permission before using power tools."

The power drill had no trouble drilling, but when we tried to use it on the screws, it was not powerful enough. So the normal screwdriver was needed to get these things attached.

Yeah, I guess the screws are sticking out of the back. It's facing away from the window, so we won't see this at all. Still bothersome a little. Maybe we'll fix that later.

We chop away at the ground with the back of the hammer to start the hole. Oh, I guess I should mention the next part requires a hammer? How do we have so many tools? Although, really, who doesn't have a hammer?

Hammering the pole was crushing the top of it. And the ground was A LOT harder than we thought. And the SMACK SMACK was LOUD! We could imagine all the neighbors running out to see, but nobody came out.

There was a nearby random metal pole that had been lurking in the bushes for a long time, come here and help us dig this hole a little deeper! Our non-garage setup failed to have a shovel, so we had to use this metal pole.

Finally got the hole deep enough that it felt secure after hammering it down firmly. I don't have any measurements to share or any data on how deep it "should" be. I imagine squirrels aren't that heavy and would not put too much stress on this setup.

 Without a shovel, and in a hurry to get this thing done, hand-scooped the dirt back around the post! Hands can be washed, no big deal. 

 The hole in the middle of the corn thing was too wide for the screw on the table, and was loose, so we just screwed a new hole into it. It was soft enough to do that. So now with corn secured to the platform, it's picnic time!

 View from the couch? Pretty good! We did this project on a Saturday and waited a while, but no show on the first day.

 The next morning there was nibbles on the corn! Woo Hoo! We have tons of the corn stuff, so we're not worried about missing the picnic show, it's cool enough to know somebody's enjoying the treat.

 That afternoon, we see squirrels running around under the table. Hey! There's a picnic waiting for you! This is like, a funny picture of a squirrel not being very smart.

 Eventually we get a good picture of a squirrel enjoying the picnic. There was a few earlier photo ops, but by the time we got to the window with the camera, they jumped away. Finally got one distracted by the feast enough not to notice us. Sitting on top, and not on the benches. Don't they know how picnic tables work?

Thanks for the fun gift, we'll get to enjoy a lot of awesome shows. The ultimate "Reality TV"!