I diagnosed the problem and researched possible solutions. By far, one option was the cheapest and easiest to execute. Inexpensive. Readily available. Light. Easy to Handle. Answer: pie pans.
Problem solved.
Flashback: One beautiful fall Saturday afternoon about six years ago, I was resting comfortably in my living room when, out of the blue, I was startled by a loud staccato noise that would remind you of machine gun fire. It echoed through the entire house.
Tat-a-tat-a-tat- tat-tat tat-a-tat-a-tat!
That got my attention.
It was clear the sound was coming from outside my house – just outside my house – possibly against the side of my house. It came again.
Tat-a-tat-a-tat- tat-tat tat-a-tat-a-tat!
Quick as a flash, I jumped off the couch and bounded outside to find out what in the world could possibly be making that alarming sound. As I reached my front porch, I turned to look up in the area of the drilling sound and I found the culprit – a downy woodpecker, just drumming away.
I should explain a little about our house and why it might attract such a creature. The exterior of our house is made of cedar siding, stained a natural wood color. So, I suppose, to a tiny bird searching for food or wanting to impress a potential mate, our house appears to be an oddly box-shaped sort of tree, just calling out for him to peck away.
That’s all well and good…but the golf-ball sized hole he left behind would not do. And, left unchecked, might the hole get larger? So, what’s a homeowner to do?
Enter the army of aluminum pie pans.
Something about the combination of movement, light reflection and noise serves as a deterrent to woodpecker pecking. I read a number of websites and they suggested a few pie-pan tips:
- Collect a number of aluminum pie pans
- Fasten them back to back (think bottom of pan on bottom of pan)
- Attach them to some sort of line (I use monofilament)
- Deploy them in the area near the pecking
- Hang them in such a way that the are allowed to waft in the breeze
The pie pans might catch a flash of sunlight; the backs of the pans clang together; the breeze allows the pans to move freely (and unpredictably). The combination will startle the birds and encourage them to relocate their drumming to some unsuspecting tree in the woods.
For additional ‘coverage,’ one expert suggested tearing strips of aluminum foil and attaching it to the bottom of your apparatus. Seemed like a good plan.
Once I deployed them around the perimeter of the house, I could only imagine the reactions of some of the more uptight neighbors. One of Paul’s youth baseball teammates asked if the pie pans were outside for b-b gun target practice; someone else quipped that the formation looked like some sort of pagan sun worshiping ritual.
Jokes aside, the silvery formation worked.
The drilling ceased. We repaired the hole and forgot about the practice until the next fall when, at a different place on the side of our house, the same sequence of events unfolded. By the third year, I began to deploy the cache of aluminum as a proactive prevention method.
Lisa wasn’t very pleased with the look of the lawn ornaments. In fact, I took a lot of heat around the house for my homemade deterrent. But, you know what? It worked.
In fact, after a couple years of deploying the pans as a prophylactic agent, I forgot about doing it. That didn’t matter as I had broken the cycle.
Until the other day, that is.
Lisa and I were sitting in the same family room when we heard the same rat-a-tat on a different part of the house. We went outside and, sure enough, we saw another golfball-sized hole.
So, back out of storage came my silvery friends and I can report they are flying freely this evening; standing guard against our feathered friends. And I suspect, as in past years, they will do the job…even if they do look a bit odd.
JG
Originally posted 10/15/2013
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