Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

After a week I threw this birdhouse in the barrel and burned it with the cardboard. Okay, there has got to be a story you think. Well, to start my birthday was coming up and my wife told me that she's ordered a bunch of stuff for me using my account and that I wasn't to look at any of my orders or notifications. You might realize how difficult that is. It was tough. Thankfully it was only a few days until the reading ban was lifted. This birdhouse was one of the items. It makes a nice gift for a bird enthusiast. I use 4x4 posts to mark the property lines every few hundred feet and I top those off with a bird house of one kind or another. Well one of the oldest posts (left over from ancient fencing) needed to be replaced and she knew it. So she knew that I would need a new birdhouse and thought to be helpful. I thanked her for it and set the birdhouse out on a bench on the deck planning to install it in a day or two. Then next morning I noticed nesting material all over the place. It has to be some kind of record, at least in the top percentile, for the shortest time to occupancy. A bluebird laid claim to the real estate and was already moving in. The birdhouse was just laying on the bench. I decided not to move it out of courtesy. I am pretty sure that she filled the box with nesting material by the evening. Over then next couple of nights she'd poke out her beak and a single eye to watch me as I let the dog out after dark. I instructed the Beagle to not disturb the bird. After two days my wife emailed me at work asking what I had done with the birdhouse. Well, nothing I said. It should still be there. Wasn't it? That evening I found the birdhouse some distance from the deck and, no, the predator protector did not help save anything. It doesn't apparently protect the nest from Beagles. My Beagle carried the birdhouse away and pried off the roof breaking it into two pieces and laid waste to a lot of the rest of the wood. I'm sure she had a great time chewing away at it. So the next day my new birdhouse got tossed into the burn barrel. It didn't last a week. Anyway, I ordered two more. One for the post and one for somewhere close to the deck. At this point the word is out locally that this particular birdhouse may not be a safe haven for your next nest. I'm not expecting either of the new houses to be claimed nearly as quickly. The moral of the story is to not trust your Beagle and to mount the birdhouse right away in a safe place even if it frustrates an active nest builder. This is a great birdhouse by the way. I plan to keep these two new birdhouses just a bit longer than the last.