Suet wars

We feed suet from a thick tree branch, 6 feet long, tied on end to the railing on our deck. I stuff suet in holes I've drilled in the branch. In hot weather the branch gets greasy, looks messy. We do suet anyway. It's not a major issue at this time in history.

We came home from a recent overnight trip to find the suet branch apparently steam-cleaned. It looked new. The raccoons did it. Phooey.

The solution is an escalation on our part — chemical warfare. Cayenne pepper. Red pepper. Habañero chilies (100,000–350,000 on the Scoville scale, very hot). Berbere, a potent Ethiopian spice.

I filled holes in the suet log with suet, then smeared on cayenne pepper. I shook a generous amount of cayenne over the dried mealworms. I added cayenne to the grape jelly. I put cayenne on the grocery list.

Did it work? Not at all.

We're removing all food on the deck reachable by raccoons until they take us off their visitation list. Suet will go in one of those wire baskets, hung high.

Too bad. The woodpeckers, sometimes two at a time, made much better use of the suet log.