Squirrel solution?

Sorry for the fuzzy picture. I was shaking from anger at the time. The squirrel was hanging by his feet, doing situps to the bird feeder. He would grab a sunflower seed and then just hang upside down and eat it. My wood feeders have little squirrel feet scratches all over the tops of them. They completely destroyed another feeder shortly after we moved in. Apparently the bb gun wasn't that scary to them.  Or this was a squirrel who had not felt the sting yet. Either way, something had to be done.

This morning I made a trip to Lowe's. The result:

 

I put up galvanized wire between two trees and made loops for the four bird feeders. The best feature is the section of PVC pipe on both ends near the tree. That way if a squirrel tries to walk out on it they will find themselves in a "log roll" of sorts. The design is inspired by the backpack hangers at back country campsites in the GSMNP. They have a hoist (which we didn't need) to get the packs away from the bears, and then they use PVC to prevent the smaller critters from walking down to your bag and eating through it.

Take that!!

As an aside, when I was taking picture from the deck I noticed this little chipmunk giving me the eye from his hideout in the rain gutter outlet.