Friday, July 03, 2009, 02:10

Finally

The other day, we finally caught one of the raccoons in the live trap that we purchased about a month ago.

I decided it had come to the final straw one night when I went down to the barn to check on the horses and to give the kitties a little more to eat. As soon as I put out the kitty food, the raccoon came, as if he were waiting for me, and then growled at me when I tried to chase him away.

I had put kitty food on the shelf in the barn, and I had made it only as far as the tractor when I heard a funny sound. I looked toward the kitty food shelf, and Little Sister was in the process of doing a backward somersault to get away from the raccoon that had climbed up on the shelf and was only a few inches from her. It was fascinating to watch Little Sister's evasive maneuver.

Of course, seeing as Little Sister has kittens in the barn, as soon as she landed from her backward somersault, she looked at the raccoon with daggers in her eyes.

It's amazing what I can see down in the barn with the solar light Randy gave me for Christmas. That thing is just the cat's meow -- so to speak.

I hurried back toward the kitty shelf, thinking the raccoon would leave quickly when he saw me. Instead, he reluctantly climbed down from the shelf and then retreated under the wall into the lean-to, looking out at me and growling softly. I grabbed a breast collar that was hanging there and banged it against the wall as hard as I could to scare him away. Kajun tore out of the barn, post haste, forgetting all about his treat of grain. The kittens and Little Sister were scared, too.

Not the raccoon. In all, I chased him off three times that night, and each time he growled at me.

Anyway, contrary to what the live trap manufacturers would have you believe, it is not that easy to catch a raccoon in a live trap.

The very first night we had the trap, Randy baited it with peanut butter and jelly and put it out by the bird feeder in the east side yard. We then retreated to the bedroom to watch out the window. It was only a matter of minutes before the raccoon appeared.

I could hardly believe it was going to be that easy.

As it turned out, it wasn't.

The raccoon, instead of going into the live trap, merely reached through the side of the cage, swiped at the peanut butter and jelly with his paw, pulled it out and licked it off. He kept it up until he had cleaned up all of the PB&J.

Randy put more peanut butter and jelly in the trap, and then we retreated to the bedroom window again. Randy brought out his big spotlight this time, and as soon as the raccoon appeared, he shined the spotlight on him.

You could tell the light made the raccoon nervous, and soon he scurried off into the brush.

He came back after that -- to get up in the bird feeder but not to eat the peanut butter and jelly in the live trap. I think the light spooked him away from the live trap. Too bad the same wasn't true for my bird feeder!

It was while we were contemplating how else to bait the trap or where else to put it when the raccoon growled and hissed at me in the barn. At one point, we were considering baiting the trap with bird seed, seeing as the raccoons like bird seed so well, but then Randy decided that a black bear with his head in a live trap was a little more than he wanted to deal with. We do have bears around here, and I agreed that a bear with his head stuck in the live trap might not be the best situation. It would provide plenty of blog material, of course, but I'd rather do without the bear in the live trap.

We decided then that the path to the barn in the west side yard would be the best place for the live trap.

Unfortunately, the same thing happened. The raccoon reached through the cage to get the peanut butter and jelly but would not go inside the live trap.

Then one day I got the idea of putting duct tape around the end of the trap so the raccoon couldn't reach into it. Randy duct taped the trap that evening.

And by morning, the raccoon was caught in the live trap.

Randy took him to a wooded area a ways away where there are no houses and let him loose. He said the raccoon did not need any encouragement to leave as soon as the cage door was open.

That's not all of the raccoons around here, by any means. There's still the huge one I've seen in the bird feeder a few times. That one is much more wary, though, and scampers off at the first sign of a human.

But, we shall see. Now that the live trap has duct tape on it, catching another one might not take so long.

LeAnn R. Ralph

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Monday, June 29, 2009, 01:17

Storm Clouds

Storm Clouds
Thursday morning I was awakened abruptly by the sound of strong wind and hard rain hitting the roof. It was 7 a.m. and I needed to get up anyway. Randy had gone outside earlier and had taken pictures of the storm approaching.

It rained hard for about 20 minutes, then tapered off but then started raining again. I had no choice but to go outside and feed the horses because I had to get to the newspaper office. Isabelle stood in her shelter and peered out at me, reluctant to come out in the rain. Eventually she decided getting wet was worth it so she could eat her grain. I was just at the point of thinking I should take her feed tub to her shelter when she came out to the fence.

Kajun had no problem coming into the barn and out of the rain to get his feed.

By the amount of water in Isabelle's feed tub, it appears that we got about an inch of rain.

It has been so long since we've had a hard rain like that (years, in fact), that I was surprised to see water had come in under the garage door in the basement -- enough water that it made it across the floor to the floor drain.

The sky cleared off later in the morning, and by Thursday afternoon we had bright, sparkling sunshine. Friday was a bright, clear day as well. Even though the temperature was 90 degrees, it did not feel as bad it did last week when the dewpoints were up into the 70s and the humidity was high too.

Randy found some drought information on the Internet, and nearly half of Wisconsin is considered to be in a drought. The drought began in 2003, according to the information Randy found. The winter of 2003, as I recall, was when we had the last good snowfall, and it has been downhill since then.

Even with the rain we have gotten recently, we are still in a drought. We will have to get above normal precipitation for a while in order for the subsoil to become soaked up again.

It seems that either drought or rain, the weeds in the Isabelle's pasture are doing quite well. Too bad horses and people cannot eat pigweed, alyssum, and ragweed. Randy has been going out with a "weed whacker" -- a device with a cutting blade at the end of a long handle -- and has been hacking away at the weeds. The tool is a little more substantial than the weed whip and is considerably heavier. It's effective, though. It's just that it makes my shoulders ache to watch him.

One evening this past week, Randy also was able to get a couple of pictures of sunsets. I especially like the one of the backlit clouds. They look like they are on fire.

LeAnn R. Ralph

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