Yuen: Staying strong in the face of an unrelenting woodpecker

I have survived 20 months of a pandemic and the depths of distance-learning despair. As God as my witness, this woodpecker is not going to take me down.

But I might be unraveling.

Last year, while working from home with my two kids closed out of classrooms, I had to fight the incessant call of "Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. MOM. MOM. MOM!"

Nevertheless, I persisted.

This fall it's been replaced with "Tap tap tap tap. Tap tap tap tap tap. TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP!"

And I worry I will not make it.

Torture by woodpecker is a first-world problem, one I hadn't bothered to care much about when I would encounter the gripes of other homeowners. Complaining about these birds seemed like an unreturnable crossing into middle age, the way one bemoans stubborn belly fat or expresses shock over their first colonoscopy prep. Yes, they're unpleasant, but we don't need to hear every detail.

Boy, was I wrong. You need to hear every detail, because now it's happened to me.

The woodpecker was probably no longer than 6 inches, from the tip of his tail to his indefatigable beak. He rapped on the grooves of my cedar siding for three days in a row, sending my ADHD into overdrive. Did he think our house was a tree? Was he trying to impress potential soulmates? Was he hunting for bugs?

The damage was unsightly. In one corner of our house, the edges of our gorgeous cedar planks, only a few years old, looked like they had been scraped by a beaver.

I crowd-sourced solutions on Twitter, where folks suggested I throw flip-flops or small stones in the bird's direction. (That worked temporarily.) Some had luck with hanging old CDs or shiny spiral ornaments that dangle and spin in the wind. Another recommended a specific brand of reflective tape. I dispatched my husband to Menards to hunt down the bird tape, but it was sold out — in two locations. He texted me a picture of a shelf filled with those creepy fake owls, but I suspected this woodpecker would just laugh at our $12 purchase.

Two more Twitter friends said their solution was waving the figurative white flag and replacing their house's siding altogether.

"Whenever I hear that someone lives in a wood-sided home, my first thought is, 'Oh, you poor tad,' " said Val Cunningham in an e-mail after I shared with her my frustration.

Cunningham, who writes for the Star Tribune's Birding page, says she's no expert on woodpeckers. But an excellent piece she reported a few years ago, "How to deal with downy woodpeckers," has gotten a spike in readership this fall on our website, suggesting it's prime season for the bird's drilling and drumming.

She steered me to Carrol Henderson, a retired Department of Natural Resources supervisor and distinguished bird watcher. When I reached him by phone, Henderson said he would typically receive the most calls about these unwelcome visitors in the fall and winter.

What's happening? Youngsters are coming of age. Woodpeckers that hatched over the summer are venturing out in the world, scoping out territory to exploit, Henderson said.

"They're looking for that new home, they're looking for new places with tree cavities, and they're exploring for food sources," he said, calling it a seasonal phenomenon.

My particular issue, he surmised, stemmed from the grooves between my cedar planks that could be a refuge for delicious bugs.

"These are very tiny insects that you don't even know that they're there. But somehow the woodpeckers figure it out. And then they're the ones that will go up and down those grooves pecking to probe with their tongues to pull the insects out," he said.

Some entomologists say it's unlikely wood siding is harboring those insects. Nonetheless, to deter the pecking, Henderson suggested hanging a square of mesh hardware cloth over the damaged areas. The cloth could be even stapled to the wood to make sure the feathered bandits don't get back in.

In the spring, it might be a different story. That's when woodpeckers are competing for territory. They'll hammer on hard wood to make a lot of ruckus to defend their turf and attract a mate. If that weren't bad enough, some woodpeckers, so pleased with their sound, take to drilling into tin chimneys, Henderson said.

He says no solution is foolproof, so it's best to keep experimenting. In the spring, if the woodpeckers come back, he suggested I take on a beginning carpenter project: building several "woodpecker bongos" that I can install around the yard. These bongos are actually long wooden boxes that can nailed onto tree trunks. Woodpeckers searching for a nice hollow instrument will theoretically drum on the bongo, rather than my wood siding.

Henderson says I could also hang several suet birdfeeders to offer the woodpeckers an alternative to the bugs in my siding.

So apparently the end to my problems involves throwing the woodpeckers a party with lots of food and setting up a drum circle for a never-ending jam session.

There's got to be an easier way. What about the spinning spirals?

"It might freak them out for a while," Henderson allowed. "But the birds figure out it's not a danger, and they might adapt to it."

What about the fake owls?

"No, they figure that out, too," he said. "These birds are smarter than we like to give them credit for."

My friend Jon says my woodpecker woes have all the makings of a psychological thriller. He envisions it ending with a knock on the door that completes my unraveling. "Turns out to be just a delivery person with a bird feeder you bought to distract the woodpeckers," he said. "But it's already too late."

It may not be too late. This winter you can find me in the middle of the night in my back shed, coated in suet and sawdust, laboring away on my woodpecker bongo.