This is an annual event with the young squirrels here, as they explore their new world. We have large plastic domes on top of our bird feeders, to keep the squirrels from eating the food. The squirrels generally climb up the feeder support poles, realize the tops of the domes are too slippery to get down, and go back.

Every so often, a young squirrel, who is either hard-headed or not too bright, will try to jump from the deck rail to the feeder. Most of them miss and end up falling to the ground. Although it's about 20 feet to the ground, I've never seen any of them injured. Only two squirrels (at least that we've seen) have made it to one of the feeders. When they get on the feeder, they quickly realize they can't get anything to eat.

Then, they realize it's going to be difficult to jump back to the rail, because the swinging feeder negates a lot of their momentum. The first squirrel, after spending a long while going around the feeder, finally just jumped off. Today, this one actually made it back to the rail, but not before spending a lot of time looking down, probably thinking, "Oh #@$%&! ..... what do I do now?".