Backyard Squirrel Maze 2.0- The Walnut Heist

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 fault 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 [Music] 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 nuts 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 pool to this platform is the single gateway to enter the course every other pool 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 like um wrestle the satellite communications gear and the tactical mission planning and the mini vault to practice cracking a safe hold a completely different story this gang of four high-end professional bird seat 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 going to 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 a warning take more than an ounce and you're gonna have 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 like it actually twists which i think is gonna give them some problems but if they can figure this out they'll jump into this crate and the good news is that it's filled to the brim with their favorite food which is walnuts and i know this because 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 for 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 [Applause] 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 exits 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 so finally if they made it through the laser maze and everything that came before it they've made it to fort nuts 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 but before we do that i just want to mention if you've always thought it would be cool to be able to build something like a squirrel obstacle course yourself and i've got incredible news because a few times a year i teach a month-long creative engineering course and enrollment for the summer session is open for a short window right now this class covers my entire engineering design process i'll show you every step over the course of a month you're going to watch me design and create three builds from scratch but the best part is i'm gonna guide you through finishing three creative builds of your own so whether you're a complete beginner or an experienced engineer the class has been designed to meet you wherever you're at and then level up your skills so go to monthly.com markrover or use the link in the video description and then sign up and let's hang out making some cool stuff this summer now let's see some squirrels [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 [Music] 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 fat 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 fat 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 fantastic gus and rephrased a few other things but to be honest fantastic gus just doesn't roll off the tongue like fat 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 going to 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 [Music] and with some motivation for 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 and at this point fat gus is like i'm gonna need that crate of walnuts let me show you how it's done which turns out somewhat predictably [Music] now really frustrated acrobat daredevil rick tries a totally different route but you've got to admire that effort [Music] logistics man frank knows the wire connected to the fence leads to the helicopter crate so he tries sneaking in the back door [Music] 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 nuts was already feeling less and less secure that 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'm super not down with this eventually it's the fearless leader fat 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 fat 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 eats 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 [Music] and thanks in part to the dutiful supervision of fat 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 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 have 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 fat 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 segway a back to the squirrel hideout where the heist was really just picking up steam [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] and after hacker marty had accessed the computer and lowered the ladder fat 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 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 [Music] contrast that with marty who's like all right i think it was a right no straight oh was it 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 [Music] so frank hops in so they can work out their differences and then with a little encouragement he gets them going down the right way all the while fat gus continues to supervise focus marty there you go which brings us to the laser maze here's acrobat rick's first approach and he's like yeah that's us 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 are 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 fat gus was the first one to make it successfully through the laser maze and then to subsequently make it to fort nuts i mean how fat gus is this falling not just for one decoy nut but for both of them which paves the way for marty the hacker to be the one to crack the safe and as you can see here he's pretty stoked about it [Music] first he just checks it out like yep yep yep this is just like the schematic showed and then the big moment [Music] once the safe open 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 with how things turned out because rick buried all his extra nuts in the yard marty and frank made up and rekindled their friendship and fat gus got some long sock quality time with the bird feeder so everyone was happy well almost everyone this is a mechanism that can feed your dog with a pull of a lever and this is a contraption that measures the soil moisture level and then gives your plants a voice hey i need a little water over here that's delicious thank you this is a machine that measures how long you've been sitting and then annoys the crud out of you till you take a stretch break this is a contraption that could draw anything on a whiteboard and this is a secret safe for your most valuable possessions and finally this is a g dang lunchables assembly line are you kidding me and what do all of those have in common they were created by people who took my month-long creative engineering course i just launched this class for the first time a few months ago and it was so freaking rewarding to see what everybody learned and created as a result for the most part and because we got so much overwhelmingly positive feedback on the course we're doing it again you could sign up for it now this class covers my full engineering design process all the way from how i come up with an idea to prototyping to finalizing the build and giving it character i show you everything that i'm thinking everything that i'm doing and i do it three times over the course of a month you're gonna watch me design and create three totally original builds and i'm gonna guide you through finishing three creative builds of your own and this is an online class so you can take it from anywhere and work it around your schedule but it's fully immersive and intensive so whether you're a working professional or you're taking the class as a family whether you're a complete beginner or an experienced engineer this class has been designed to meet you where you're at and then level up your skills so go to monthly.com mark grover or use the link in the video description to see what other people had to say about their experience and then enroll and i'll see you in [Music] class you

Channel: Mark Rober

Views: 29,567,938

Rating: 4.971561 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: DTvS9lvRxZ8

Length: 19min 13sec (1153 seconds)

Published: Tue May 18 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Fireteeth]

So 2022 is going to be the hostile takeover of hyper-intelligent marine squirrels created and nurtured by Mark Rober. Thanks Mark.

[u/Achw3l]

I have never been more invested in squirrels in my life

[u/Dann610]

And here I thought Backyard Squirrel Maze 1.0 was very elaborate.

Also, how many cameras did he have setup throughout the course? I felt like we were able to get every camera angle possible of the squirrels' interactions with the obstacle course.

[u/ridiculousq]

this is amazing and so frickin cute

[u/archer098]

Tube City!!

[u/vfr800x]

I love how the one squirrel susses out the route of the roof maze from the outside before venturing in!

[u/Donex101]

Those squirrels really have the life.

[u/Inglebrooke]

I wish there would have been one shot of the squirrels doing the course from beginning to end. As-is, it makes it look like a lot of mini courses.

[u/NeptuneOW]

Mark Rober has never made a bad video. Not one