Squirrel Feeder

The birds had finally emptied our new feeder, so we refilled it this morning. We've had squirrels eating dropped seed and eyeing the feeder all week, but it seemed to be out of their reach. Seemed being the operative word. This morning one of them figured out he could climb the mesh of our screened porch then jump about three feet over to the feeder. We startled him away with clapping, but he just came back and did it again. Ugh! He might eat up the seed and/or damage the feeder, but the bigger issue is potential damage to the mesh covering the porch. Definitely not a behavior I want to encourage, so we took the feeder down temporarily. Looks like we're going to have to buy a pole so we can move the feeder further away from the porch.