Posts Tagged ‘wildlife pests’
A Thursday
There was an unexpected Asher adventure as we were about to feed the horses yesterday morning, involving a raccoon. While Cyndie and I were focused on the usual chores, Asher vanished without our noticing. His telltale, excited barking in the distance instantly grabbed our attention.
Cyndie stopped what she was doing and hustled in the direction of the hay shed. In the perennial garden just beyond the shed, she found Asher and the raccoon in conflict with each other. I stayed with the horses, trying to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary was going on, despite the angry noises coming from the raccoon.
She reported that Asher had the butt end of the still-complaining raccoon in his mouth and took off running when she showed up. When she caught up to him again, across the road at the end of our driveway, she said he was in the process of burying the no longer living critter.
I don’t remember seeing coon hound in the 18 breeds identified in his DNA.
Our neighbor just south of us was pleased to hear he has some help in controlling the population of nuisance wildlife. When Cyndie stopped by to deliver some Christmas cookies, he told her he had dispatched 19 possums and 25 raccoons this year.
It’s comforting to know that we may have gained some tolerance for occasions when Asher might wander onto their property, now that he’s seen as contributing to pest control in the area.
After a couple of days above freezing, we are facing another Winter Weather Advisory from the National Weather Service, which predicts light snow, wind as high as 40-50 mph, and icy flash freezing conditions. Needless to say, the horse blankets are back on.
Mia needs the added protection more than the others, but she was the most uncooperative about letting us cover her up. She doesn’t grow as thick a winter coat and ends up shivering more quickly than the others, so one would think she’d welcome the blanket.
Instead of chasing her around in an attempt to force compliance, we are inclined to patiently invite her to come to us as we stand holding the blanket. Since they were all eating from their feed buckets while we were putting the blankets on, that just meant standing close to her bucket, and eventually she stayed put while we covered her up and hooked up all the clasps.
I have every confidence that they understand why we are covering them up again. We also move hay nets from out on fence posts to up underneath the overhang. Since we only do these things during periods of stormy weather and always return things to normal afterwards, I believe they read the signals and accept the changes without unwarranted stress.
Lousy weather is stressful enough on its own, especially when high winds are involved. The Weather Service is tossing out phrases like “a conveyor belt of Aleutian low-pressure systems” and “atmospheric rivers.”
To us, it just seems like a Thursday.
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Unpleasant Surprise
In all the years we have been keeping horses on our property, I’ve never had to deal with the situation I found yesterday morning under the overhang. There was no sign of anything out of order when I opened the door from inside the barn. While the horses calmly waited, I started on the north end with my usual housekeeping tasks.
Coming around to the south end, I moved past Swings and got startled by the sight of a furry animal curled up as if napping against the wall beneath a hay bag. It was difficult to see the head but the tail was a dead giveaway for a raccoon. I could clearly see the movement of breaths but no other evidence of its condition.
The thought crossed my mind that a startled horse could have kicked out at an intruder and led to one knocked-out raccoon. The varmint was also laying next to a mineral block meant for the horses. I wondered if the bandit had simply gorged until overfilled and conked out right there. That was a lot less likely.
I decided to just let it “sleep” while I carried on with my business. At one point, I saw that Swings went over and sniffed at it with what looked to be empathy, so it wasn’t like the horses didn’t realize it was there.
After setting out the feed pans for the horses, I dashed back to the house for preparations to euthanize the critter. When I returned, I moved the horses to the other side and closed the gates so I could take care of things with them out of the way.
There was nothing in my life instruction manual about dealing with this kind of thing. It wasn’t what I signed on for when I agreed to feed and clean up after the horses. But you do what you gotta do.
The poor critter was unceremoniously picked up by the tail and dropped into an empty feed bag that I put into another empty feed bag for disposal in the trash. Not knowing if other health concerns contributed to the sorry state I found it in initially, I chose to keep the remains out of reach of any scavengers.
I did decide to dispose of that mineral block, as well. The horses had never really shown much interest in it and if it was starting to attract other animals, it was doing more harm than good.
Every day is an adventure. I’m grateful the horses took it all in stride and my hassle of having to deal with the unpleasant surprise was hardly a blip in the morning routine.
It would be just fine with me if we could have another ten years or more without needing to repeat this routine again.
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Nighttime Screeching
Two nights in a row now. High pitched snarling, screeching growls in the darkness. We are grateful to be sleeping indoors, even if the sound leaks through our windows and doors enough to be audible. In the cold darkness, it must sound magnitudes more unsettling.
It wasn’t originally obvious what was going on, since we have heard the cries of rabbits being preyed upon, intense yelping from packs of coyotes, and rare screeches from owls in our woods on various occasions. This seemed to hold elements from any and all of those.
When there was no evidence of any carnivore activity to be found on the morning after the first night of terrorizing sounds and the screaming resumed the following night as darkness settled over the land, my suspicions about the source coalesced.
For reasons that completely evade my understanding, both Delilah and Pequenita showed no hint of reaction to the angry creature sounds happening just beyond our walls. They both seem to react to a myriad of other triggering sounds occurring beyond my range of hearing, but this drama that was catching my attention mysteriously meant nothing to them.
I pressed my ear to the glass of the back door to gauge the distance and direction to the source of the creepy screams as I attempted to silently work the latch. As soon as the door cracked open, the sounds stopped. There was no echo, no winding down of conflict, no sounds of movement. Only silence. Instant silence.
Standing motionless outside the door, holding it closed but not latched to avoid making a single sound myself, I hoped to outlast whatever creature it was that was smart enough to respond to my appearance with such immediate disappearance. Was it holding its breath?
I was, mine.
It would have to eventually move. Whatever the screaming was all about couldn’t have just totally ended. If it was some fracas between two animals, the animosity couldn’t have just vanished because I showed up.
They, or it, won. I gave up after a few minutes and went back inside. Undaunted, I headed right to our high beam spotlight flashlight to follow up on my hunch. At the back door again, I switched it on and pointed it toward the high branches of the nearest big tree.
Suspicion confirmed. Two beady raccoon eyes glowed in the light beam.
We had thought the masked bandits weren’t active in the coldest months but research reveals mating can be happening in February and March. Yippy! Up to seven new babies possible in April and May. [sarcasm]
That screaming could be males competing for a single female. Beats me why I only saw one set of eyes in the tree limb when the noise definitely sounded like conflict between two parties.
Time to practice our trapping skills again to see if we can improve on the modest effectiveness we had last summer.
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Stinky Year
Look at it this way, today it is the fifteenth day of July, so we are halfway through the month that comes after the midpoint of the year 2020. All this whining about 2020 being so problematic will be over before you know it. We can stop wondering about what the next calamity could possibly be and start marveling over how we got this far without throwing in the towel.
Unless you happen to have school-age children, that is, and have no idea how to cope with more distance learning in the fall. Or if you got sick with the coronavirus. Or you are out of work due to the pandemic. Or lost your medical insurance because you no longer have a job. Or you can’t pay your bills because you didn’t qualify for financial assistance.
In the wee hours before waking yesterday, I experienced the most vivid dream where I found myself in the midst of my high school classmates in something of a reunion gathering. I am curious about what threw my mind into that reconnection with my school days. In classic dream fashion, by daylight, I lost the gist of what I was thinking and feeling about the situation while the dream was underway, but was left with the vague pleasure of having been among peers I haven’t seen lately.
Maybe it’s a mental defense mechanism for escaping the shelter-in-place mindset of the pandemic.
Cyndie has been up at the lake for the last two days and she took Delilah with her. It has been refreshingly calm at home on my own after the day-job. The cat and the chickens don’t ask for much from me, so it has felt like a little vacation.
Of course, the pesky wildlife hasn’t taken any time off. For two nights in a row, I found our kitchen compost bin had been abused and separate access panels forced open so they could ravage the rotting goods. Last night, I wrapped it with a ratcheted tie-down strap to secure the doors from opening.
Let’s see the little raccoon claws loosen a ratchet mechanism.
Yesterday morning on the drive to work, a young-looking fox trotted across the road just around the corner from our property. Luckily for us, that enemy-of-hens was headed in the direction of a neighboring property where egg-layers roam freely.
Later, as my car approached a fresh road-kill, I centered my tires to miss the mess and held my breath. Before I even started to resume breathing, I felt the acrid fumes in my nostrils. I was afraid to inhale, but I had to.
Fresh skunk. Reeeally fresh. Ow.
At least 2020 is over halfway to the history books. The whole year seems to have a general stink to it.
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Cute Nuisances
They sure look cute. All three of them, according to Cyndie’s eyewitness account, peering down at her from the great oak tree right outside our front door. I only count two in this photo she sent me yesterday while I was too far away at work to do anything about them.
I suppose I could have thrown a shoe up toward their general direction.
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If there are three young ones up there, logic suggests there is at least one parent also loitering in the vicinity. I’m happy to have so much wildlife wandering around, but we’d rather not have them choosing to reside so close to our home.
The way people around here deal with this kind of thing usually involves firearms, which we are more comfortable not keeping and bearing, regardless of any amendments.
Next choice, live trap, which involves transporting to a distance from which they won’t return at a location they are welcome.
Last choice, which we used when a mama raccoon had babies in the hay shed, pay painfully large sums of our hard-earned dollars to have someone solve the problem for us.
Out of sight, out of mind, out of cash.
As of this morning, I (we) have gone with my tried and true method of making no decision yet, while allowing time to provide a shove toward some solution the universe prefers. We left home and drove up to the lake for Labor Day weekend, taking Delilah with us.
Maddie, our most recent summer animal-care provider, is stopping by to tend to chickens and feed Pequenita while we are away.
Cyndie warned her to close the coop promptly at dusk and keep an eye out for the little masked bandits.
We’ll see what time brings.
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Little Help
We moved a lot of hay bales over the weekend, but in so doing, came upon a little surprise. Unexpected company had taken up residence in the hay shed.
What I thought to be the squealing of baby bunnies turned out to be raccoons. One of our customers spotted the mama moving around after we took the bales from over her nest site. We decided to seek assistance from a wildlife removal professional.
By the time the pest control guy arrived, all was quiet in the shed. We had no proof that the critters were still in there, but he said they had probably just gone back to sleep.
There was no sign of them in the spot where we first heard them, but I knew where to look next, because Delilah had showed me. Earlier, when the mama must have moved her babies, they resumed their squeaking frustration. Delilah and I just happened to be walking up the driveway at that time and she heard their cries through the back wall of the shed.
The intensity of her response to the sounds included her attempting to dig through rocks after them. That provided a precise location to present to our new wildlife assistant.
He was so close to a textbook capture. Inches. One inch, actually. I saw it. There was the tiniest hitch as our guy tried to pull the snare loop closed around the mama raccoon, and that’s all she needed to step all the way through it. Then the game was on.
She climbed up to the rafters. She skittered back and forth. Eventually, she made a huge airborne leap to escape the shed. Too bad for her, she chose to seek cover in the immediately adjacent culvert. Her options shifted entirely in our favor.
With a cage trap on one end of the culvert, we used a little water pressure from the other end to inspire her to move into it. The babies were a little easier to contain, although they were much older that expected, all five of them.
The pest control service comes with a guarantee they will relocate the evicted wildlife over 25 miles away.
Problem solved, …thanks to a little help.
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Relative Something 