Thursday, May 05, 2005, 19:53
Run for Your Life!
Tuesday night a little after 11 p.m., as I walked through the kitchen, a shadow outside by the bird feeder caught my eye. At first I thought it was one of the barn kitties. But no, it was not a cat. It was. . .
. . .a raccoon. A very large raccoon.
The raccoon sniffed around the bird feeder post, and then, in the blink of an eye, climbed my trellis (*my* trellis!), got into the bird feeder and started munching.
"Well," I said, "we can't have that, can we."
I tiptoed across the room, flipped on the light, yanked open the door and charged out onto the porch, yelling and hissing.
The raccoon didn't even stop to see what was coming after it but took a flying leap out of the bird feeder and disappeared into the dark.
The next morning, I told Randy that he ought to set up the live trap by the bird feeder. Last year, he caught a half a dozen raccoons in the live trap and released them in a more remote and marshy area of the township.
So, Wednesday night Randy set up the live trap by the bird feeder. (He baits it with a mixture of bird seed and peanut butter, which works pretty well.)
Once the trap was set up, we watched for the raccoon. And watched for the raccoon. But no raccoon appeared.
"Okay," Randy said after a while.,"That's enough for me. I'm going to bed. It's 11 o'clock, and I haven't seen it y—THERE IT IS!"
And sure enough, there was the raccoon.
It didn't even look at the live trap, but instead, immediately climbed the trellis and started munching bird seed.
"Well," Randy said, "we can't have that, can we."
He headed off toward the bedroom.
"Where are you going?" I asked.
"To get my muzzle loader," he said.
"You can't shoot that thing now. I'll spend the rest of the night trying to get Kajun calmed down!" I said.
Neither Kajun nor I care for guns or the sound of gunshots. During deer hunting season around here, the poor horse is a nervous wreck -- and so am I.
"No, no," Randy said. "I'm just going to shoot caps to make some noise."
A minute later, Randy came back in the kitchen, yanked open the door and -- clad in pajamas and slippers -- charged out onto the porch.
Unfortunately, his progress was momentarily impeded because he caught his sleeve on the door handle.
Not that it really mattered. Between the door crashing open, Randy yelling because his sleeve was caught, Randy yelling as he ran toward the bird feeder, and Randy discharging the cap on the muzzle loader -- once again, the raccoon didn't even stop to look but leaped off the bird feeder and was gone.
Before coming back into the house, my husband set the live trap on the *other* side of the bird feeder near the corner where the raccoon has been climbing up.
Well, okay, that's two nights in a row we have managed to make the bird feeder an unattractive place for the raccoon to eat bird seed.
Shall we try for three?
LeAnn R. Ralph
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Wednesday, May 04, 2005, 19:21
Summer Guests
There I was this morning, out by the barn door, cleaning up horse manure, marveling at the sunshine and the south wind (instead of cloudy skies, snow showers and north wind that we've been having for the the past week), when I heard it.
"Tweet-tweet-twitchety-twitc hety-tweet."
Rocky and Juliette, the two black kittens from last year, heard it, too. They always like to 'help' me with whatever I am doing, but at the moment, they were *flat cats* on the barn floor, staring up at the ceiling, not moving a muscle.
I went into the barn and sure enough. There they were.
Barn swallows.
The barn swallows always arrive at the beginning of May, and they leave at the beginning of September. I saw just one pair today, but that's not unusual. The swallows, I have noticed, send out an advance pair to check things over. The rest of them will be here in a few days. When all of the barn swallows are here, we have quite a few nesting pairs -- maybe 8 or 10, all together.
What an awesome day. Sunshine. And the barn swallows have arrived!
LeAnn R. Ralph
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