- This is a bird feeder, and everything you see
surrounding me in my yard is an attempt to protect it
from four thieving squirrels.
If they want the birdseed and the lifetime supply
of walnuts in this bank vault, they'll first need
to pass through my nine-part obstacle course.
By design, it's extremely challenging.
It's meant to test their mental limits
and their physical limits.
I held back no punches, but I have to admit, in hindsight,
I once again completely underestimated my adversary.
And truthfully, I never thought I'd be that crazy guy
in the neighborhood obsessing over the squirrels,
but they started it first when they would
constantly pillage the birdseed
from any bird feeder I would put up about a year ago.
That led to me defending it with an obstacle course,
which they handily defeated,
and so after a year of ruminating
on how to avenge that L with a majorly improved version
and then two months of planning, my buddy John and I
got together for a 20-second build montage.
(upbeat music)
(tools whirring)
(nuts clattering)
Here are the basic elements.
For starters, here's their favorite bird feeder,
at the end of the course, and it's sitting atop Fort Knuts,
the most secure walnut vault in the western United States.
Now since birds can fly, they can come and go
as they please and eat all the food they want,
but the only way for the squirrels to make it right here
is by surviving my nine-part grueling obstacle course
which all starts right here.
Climbing up this pole to this platform
is the single gateway to enter the course.
Every other pole you see has some kind of countermeasure
to keep the squirrel from just climbing up
and then entering the course halfway through.
And so the first challenge is this casino,
which may seem like an odd choice
until you realize that as we were building the course,
we also built them some cozy little squirrel houses.
So we put them up in a couple different trees
and after a few days, it looked like they'd actually
made some renovations, so I went to take a closer look
and sure enough, here's the before and here's the after.
Even on the inside,
they made some questionable decor updates.
So while it might look like they were just using the houses
to relax, or stretch, or look out the window, or wrestle,
the satellite communications gear
and the tactical mission planning
and the mini vault to practice cracking a safe
told a completely different story.
This gang of four high-end professional birdseed thieves
were secretly planning to pull off
an honest to goodness "Mission: Impossible,"
"Ocean's 11" style mega walnut heist,
which is why I was gonna protect
the birdseed and walnut vault
with the most state-of-the-art security measures
just like the casino did in "Ocean's 11."
So once in the casino, you'll see the slot machine
and the classic Vegas buffet, but with the warning:
take more than an ounce,
you're gonna nap to deal with security.
Now that I got the squirrels on the run,
they'll naturally want to jump to this bar
but there's a twist.
It actually twists, which I think
is gonna give 'em some problems,
but if they can figure this out,
they'll jump into this crate, and the good news
is that it's filled in the brim
with their favorite food, which is walnuts,
and I know this 'cause I tested a bunch of different options
and they always went with the walnuts first.
But the bad news is that once you add a little weight
to the system, the helicopter starts moving
just like the helicopter from "Mission: Impossible."
Oh, and we've got a baffle here at the top
to stop a squirrel from just crawling
along the wire from the fence.
The helicopter stops next to this wall,
which seems simple enough, except that the bricks
randomly move and adjust themselves in and out.
And of course, at any time, if they fall off,
they gotta go back and start over
the whole course from the beginning.
After that, we come to their hideout,
and this is when they'll switch from defense to offense
because it's where they hang out and plan.
You can see it's sort of messy with their tools
and their blueprints on the wall that show
if they open the floor on the elevator,
the elevator shaft leads them underground
and into the sewers.
Then if they crawl through the sewers,
it will take them right to the control center
for a second room that might look familiar.
And just like in "Mission: Impossible,"
their goal is to go up through the ceiling
to access the air vents, but there's no way
to make it up there unless they type the password
into the keyboard in the control room next door, like this.
(motor whirring)
And at that point, they can climb the ladder
and they're in the vents, and the vents are a total maze.
There's lots of different twists and turns
they'll need to navigate up here,
So at any moment, if they're too lost,
they can always exit the whole course
by using the one-way squirrel emergency exit,
which also exists for any enclosed room on the whole course.
And for the penultimate challenge,
it's back down from the air ducts
through this laser maze, where they'll have to harness
their inner Catherine Zeta-Jones.
If they sufficiently touch any of the lasers,
the metal base contacts and completes the circuit,
which sends a signal from this microcontroller to a relay
to a solenoid, which causes this pneumatic piston to fire,
which slams this door shut for one minute.
And because I'm basically certain they'll try
and get to this point by climbing from the roof
on top of this tube, I've placed a shield here
with another enforcement squirrel to try and deter them.
And so finally, if they've made it through the laser maze
and everything that came before it,
they've made it to Fort Knuts, and as far as I'm concerned,
if they crack the safe by giving this handle a little turn,
they've earned every last walnut in this bank.
After the course was set up,
they could definitely smell the walnuts in the vault
and then you could see them sort of
working things out from the fence line.
And so after two months of prep work,
it was time to test our extensive security measures
against this formidable set of 500-gram rodents.
(light music)
And right out of the gate, we got him with the buffet.
And as he sticks his entire face under the sneeze guard,
absentmindedly reading the sign,
you can see the exact moment he realizes
he might have screwed up.
And the slow-mo shows Rick just really laying himself out.
Oh, by the way, that's Rick.
All four squirrels have names, and more importantly,
like any crew looking to pull off a heist,
they all have specific roles to play,
starting with everyone's favorite, Phat Gus,
who of course is the mastermind of this operation.
On a heist, this is the role
of the Frank Ocean or an Ethan Hunt.
Now, I just have to say for those who aren't familiar,
last year I named one of the squirrels Phat Gus
because he loved to eat and was a little on the hefty side,
but then halfway through, I noticed he had nipples,
which it turns out means he was actually a girl
and a pregnant one at that,
so it was just a whole PR disaster,
and I switched the name to Phantastic Gus
and Rephrased a few other things
but to be honest, Phantastic Gus just doesn't
roll off the tongue like Phat Gus, so I asked permission
to use my preferred phrasing and as you can see,
I got full consent.
Next up is Rick.
He's the acrobat, the grease man, the gutsy one.
He's the go-to for any task
that is gonna require some athletic abilities.
And then we've got Marty, he's the hacker.
Anything with computers or bank safes, and he's your guy,
but while he's really smart, he also scares pretty easy.
And finally, we've got Frank with logistics.
A good heist starts with a good plan.
He's got the whole course memorized
and he's mapped it out and provided blueprints for the team.
And so back to the course, we've got Marty the hacker here,
who, again, is a bit skittish, so you can see
he's coming in pretty cautious.
But who can resist a buffet?
Once again, the real magic is found in the slow-mo.
Eventually they realized security was just too tight
at this casino, and Rick goes straight to the twist bar.
Excellent. Here's try two.
(light music)
And with some motivation form the bird,
he's like, "I got this, I got this, I got this.
I don't think I got this."
The real time replay on this one is great too.
(person screaming)
And at this point, Phat Gus is like,
"I'm gonna get that crate of walnuts.
Let me show you how it's done."
Which turns out somewhat predictably.
(light music)
Now really frustrated, acrobat daredevil Rick
tries a totally different route.
(light music)
I gave this a 9.5, but sorry Rick,
the Russian judge gave it a six.
You gotta stick the landing.
Logistics man Frank knows the wire connected to the fence
leads to the helicopter crate, so he tries
sneaking in the back door and is also forced to retreat.
And finally, Marty the hacker realizes
if you're just scared and you run real fast,
the bar doesn't have time to spin on you,
and you can see Rick just replicating the strategy.
So after about two days, all of them could cruise
through the first part of this course about this fast,
and Fort Knuts was already feeling less and less secure.
Phat Gus is like, "Wait, is this thing moving? I'm good."
Here, Rick Hypothesizes if he doesn't sit in the crate,
it won't move, and here he rejects that hypothesis
with a legendary leap, and now is a good time
to remind ourselves that squirrels
are one of the few mammals that can survive
a fall from any height, because as you can see here,
they make their body super flat to increase drag,
effectively becoming their own parachute.
But just in case, you okay Rick?
"Yep. All good."
And Marty the hacker fraidy cat is just like,
"Yeah, I am super not down with this."
Eventually it's the fearless leader Phat Gus
who demonstrates the ride is definitely worth it.
And soon you've got Frank
and the rest of the gang following suit,
which leads us to the wall of a thousand moving bricks.
And first up, you got Phat Gus, who kicks things right off
with a pull of his parachute.
And Rick just barely misses.
Skittish Marty gets one taste of a moving brick
and absolutely yeets himself into this tree.
And while there were plenty of instances
where a moving brick did dump the squirrels,
causing them to start over from the beginning,
what was even better was Marty psyching himself out
in the anticipation that a brick might move,
even though the wall wasn't powered on
for any of these clips.
(light music)
And thanks in part to the dutiful supervision of Phat Gus,
eventually, like all the other challenges so far,
they got it down to a science
where they could cruise by the wall fairly quickly.
(light music)
And now's a good time to mention,
the squirrels weren't the only ones attempting the course.
This is Splinter the rat,
and here he is with one of his buddies.
He liked to make the rounds to all the houses each night,
which sometimes were vacant and sometimes they weren't.
There goes frank to chase him off his lawn.
And you might've noticed the stuff in the house.
The squirrels would gather nesting materials
from various sources, or somewhat hilariously,
just steal from each other.
Here's a bonus Santa Claus impression
for all the Phat Gus fans out there.
So from Splinter and his buddies
to not at all creepy possums.
there's a surprisingly constant variety of wildlife
that passes through a suburban backyard,
including a dumb dog who, for some reason,
is much less interested in squirrels
than he is my camera gear, which is a lovely segue
back to the squirrel hideout,
where the heist was really just picking up steam.
("Mission: Impossible" theme)
("Mission: Impossible" theme continues)
And after hacker Marty had accessed the computer
and lowered the ladder, Phat Gus followed behind
and joined him in the vents, but in the process,
a critical tool dropped down,
which led to a lovely recreation of an iconic scene.
("Mission: Impossible" theme)
And as a side note,
they figured out the exit door pretty quickly,
and they functioned as a one-way door exactly as intended.
And now with the vents, it was Frank's time to shine.
You can see here he's just double checking
the actual air duct layouts to make sure
they match the blueprints he's memorized,
and once he's satisfied, he steps up,
and as you can see, he nails it first try.
You can just sense his confidence here.
(light music)
Contrast that with Marty, who's like,
"All right, I think it was a right, no, it was straight.
Oh, was it Left? Crap, I gotta go check the map again,"
and as a result, most of his runs
would end up looking something like this.
So here's Frank coaching him from the outside.,
And you can see Marty's a little defensive about it.
So Frank hops in so they can work out their differences,
and then with a little encouragement,
he gets him going down the right way.
All the while, Phat Gus continues to supervise.
Focus, Marty. There you go.
(light music)
Which brings us to the laser maze.
Here's acrobat Rick's first approach
and he's like, "Yeah, that sucks."
And just as expected, he climbs on top of the tube
and he's like, "Yeah, I totally got this,"
when in fact, he didn't have it.
In real time, it happens so fast, it just looks like chaos.
But if we slow down this second attempt,
we can remind ourselves of how squirrels
have mastered the laws of physics
to always land on their feet.
Did you catch it?
The first is the locking of the head
on a landing target in less than 300 milliseconds.
If you go back and watch any jump from this video,
that locking of their head is the first thing
they always do, and the second
is using conservation of angular momentum
like an ice skater to pull their arms and legs
in and out at the right times to rotate fast
and then hold in the right orientation.
Combine those two tricks with the flat body parachute
and extending their legs at the last minute
to absorb the shock, and they're perfectly adapted
for living high in the trees.
In fact, squirrels have been around
for over 30 million years and they've had to evolve
relatively little in all that time.
So then Rick's like, "Fine, I'll use the stupid tube
like a normal squirrel.
What is this?
See, I knew this was suss."
And here's Frank, who just watched what happened
and therefore is appropriately cautious.
But he hops right back on the saddle
and this time he nails it.
And in the end, it feels appropriate
that the Mastermind Phat Gus was the first one
to make it successfully through the laser maze
and then to subsequently make it to Fort Knuts.
I mean, how Phat Gus is this?
Falling not just for one decoy nut,
but for both of 'em, which paves the way
for Marty the hacker to be the one to crack the safe,
and as you could see here, he's pretty stoked about it.
(light music)
And first he just checks it out like,
"Yep, mm-hmm, yep. This is just like the schematic showed,"
And then the big moment.
(nuts clattering)
(light music)
once the safe opened, these cargo nets unfurled,
which just allowed better access to their loot.
But interestingly, more often than not,
after getting a walnut, instead of jumping off,
they would go all the way back through the course.
Here's jumpy Marty exhibiting some real PTSD,
even though I'd already turned off the whole system.
So once again, the squirrels took the W
but as far as I'm concerned, they earned it,
and I can't complain how things turned out,
'cause Rick buried all his extra nuts in the yard,
Marty and Frank made up and rekindled their friendship,
and Phat Gus got some long sought quality time
with the bird feeder, so everyone was happy.
Well, almost everyone.
(bird chirping)