Those damn squirrels

When I first bought my house a quarter century ago, I decorated for Christmas like crazy. I put a ton of lights on one of the cedar trees. During the winter the squirrels at through the wires and left a thousand pieces of outdoor lighting wire that I still find occasionally even now.

Since then I have been careful and reluctant to do outdoor lights. I have often hung the lights in my porch so they can be seen but not eaten.

Late last fall I decided to move my solar outdoor light string from around the lamp post to around the boulevard tree. Since these are solar lights it was a great opportunity to light the tree without having to run anything from the house.

Everything seemed fine until the weather warmed up and the squirrels started to get active. A few weeks ago I noticed that the lights were not coming on. I thought the solar cell had gotten turned around again which had happened a while ago.

Instead I found the solar cell on the ground. First I thought it was vandals. Upon closer inspection I discovered the wires had been severed in a few places. This lead me to believe the squirrels had been at it again!

Well, over the last couple of nights I reattached the wires using hot glue and electrical tape. Now to figure out where to put the lights that will keep them from gnawing squirrels!