Phat Gus weighs 800 grams, moves like a furry stuntman, and will absolutely strike a pose if he notices a camera pointed at him. When Mark Rober spent two months watching squirrels dismantle every commercially sold squirrel-proof bird feeder he could find, his irritation quietly curdled into something closer to admiration, and then, inevitably, into a backyard engineering project nobody had quite built before. The result was a custom-designed, eight-obstacle Ninja Warrior course, with trapdoors, a pneumatic launcher, and a wad of walnuts waiting at the finish line, built to see whether four suburban squirrels could out-think a former NASA engineer.
Three ruined bird feeders and a Jurassic Park moment
It started simply enough. Stuck at home and bored eight weeks before the course went up, Rober installed a bird feeder and settled into birdwatching. The peace lasted until the squirrels arrived. The first feeder had a wire cage marketed as squirrel-proof. One squirrel figured out how to squeeze through. The second feeder used weighted springs to drop a cage over the seed ports when something heavy landed on it. By the next morning, a squirrel had unclipped the springs entirely, pinning the cage in the blocked position and exposing the lid. The third had a baffle designed to prevent downward access. A squirrel hung from it by a few toes. Rober described the moment a squirrel first cracked the wire cage as feeling exactly like the scene in Jurassic Park when the raptors learned to open door handles. After that, there was no going back.
Two weeks of brainstorming and building followed, done with a collaborator he called his buddy John. The finished course runs in a single direction toward a platform holding the squirrels’ favorite bird feeder, plus a trapdoor rigged to release what Rober described as ‘a butt-ton of walnuts’ and unfurl celebratory banners. He chose walnuts deliberately: over one week, he laid out a buffet of seven different nuts and seeds and ran the experiment four times. Walnuts were the first thing eaten every single time.
Rick, Marty, Frank, and Phantastic Gus take the course
Four squirrels became the regular competitors, each weighing in on a custom-made scale built into the starting platform. Rick (500 grams) was clever but easily spooked. Marty (also around 500 grams) was Rick’s constant companion and tended to wait and study before committing. Frank (roughly 500 grams) was described plainly as ‘very gutsy’ and ‘kinda dumb,’ a combination that produced some of the more spectacular wipeouts. And then there was Phat Gus, a personal favorite who tips the scale at 800 grams, strikes poses for cameras, and once settled into the bird feeder like someone reclining in a hammock. Partway through filming, a close-up zoom-and-freeze revealed that Phat Gus was not, in fact, a dude, and was pregnant, prompting what Rober called ‘a bit of a pivot to smooth things over’ on the weight commentary. The name was quietly upgraded to Phantastic Gus.
The eight obstacles, in order: the Bridge of Instability (a plank attached at a single point on each end, physically identical to crawling a tightrope), the Maze of a Thousand Corridors, the Pitchfork Tumblers of Treachery (rotating arms inspired by the show Wipeout, all built to break away safely on contact), the Homewrecker (a pressure-sensor platform that resets the squirrel to the beginning after three seconds), the Slinky Bridge of Deception (a walnut dangled over a bridge that collapses under their weight), the Tourist Trap (a painted photo-op board, activated with peanut butter), the Quad Steps of Great Elevation (smooth pads at a 45-degree incline), and the Orbital Assist Platform, which Rober also called ‘the squirrel-pult,’ a pneumatic piston set deliberately to 40% pressure, producing acceleration of about half a g, roughly ten times less than a typical rollercoaster.
The squirrels were most active between 6:00 and 10:00 AM. Rober got up before sunrise every morning to film from inside the house, in his words, ‘like one of those camouflage nature photographers, only like a suburbanized version.’ Streaming cameras ran around the clock. Within about a week, all four squirrels could complete the full course in under 40 seconds. Rick was the first to reach the jackpot, apparently so delighted that he immediately ran the whole course in reverse.
The two times the squirrel-pult actually launched a squirrel, slow-motion footage showed something remarkable: within 300 milliseconds of launch, the squirrel had already locked its eyes on a landing spot and held that lock through the entire arc. Rober connected the physics directly to ice skating, where pulling limbs in accelerates rotation and extending them slows it, the same conservation of angular momentum. His friend Destin from Smarter Every Day had documented cats using the identical two tricks.
The picnic table that replaced everything
After about a week of free runs, Rober took the course down. In its place, he installed a small squirrel-sized picnic table with a door that opens each morning to release a few walnuts as a daily ration.
Frank immediately began working out how to defeat the release mechanism.
On most mornings now, the squirrels can be found waiting patiently on the bench for the door to open. Most of them, anyway. Phantastic Gus, 800 grams and thoroughly unrepentant, continues to operate on her own schedule.
