Eating Like a Squirrel

I promised you that we would compare yesterday's "Eating Like a Bird" data with those for the fuzzy birds, i.e. the most wretched sciurus carolinensis.
I put out six ounces of black oil sunflower seed a day in the deck level platform feeder we have unofficially reserved for the tree rats. (And yes, dear readers, the tree rats are so far and for the most part respecting the truce!). We learned yesterday that this equates to three ounces of actual seed product (i.e. after we lose the inedible hulls) and approximately 1,400 individual seeds.
Our platform is occupied by the usual alpha squirrel and two inferior animals.
Assuming one share each for the beta rats and two shares for the alpha, we'd expect our alpha rat eats upwards of 700 seeds and one and a half ounces (a weight equivalent to a candy bar.). But of course, the squirrel at ~600 grams weighs about 1% as much as I do, so that we are really talking about a whole lot more "candy bars" here from the standpoint of the tree rat---more like 50 of them!
Our lesson today: squirrels are unquestionably high performance eating machines and, if my calculations today are valid, are making quite a killing when raiding our feeders. It is admittedly sobering to do more math and learn that I need to buy 136 pounds of seed a year just to bribe squirrels, but it could be a great deal worse!