Thursday, June 17, 2010

Critter Problem

We live in a rural area - some say it's in the "country", which is funny to me, since we live less than a half a mile from a major Highway & we're 5 minutes from two towns in either direction. Still, we don't live in a neighborhood with houses right on top of each other.

It definitely has it's advantages & disadvantages.

One advantage - we get to commune with nature, LOL. I always laugh when we go places like The Museum of Life & Science and they have the section where you can see things like, an owl, a deer, or a black snake, etc. We have all those things and more in our back yard at any given moment.

One disadvantage - we share our yard with all these critters and they seem to think what's ours is theirs as well. I know they might have been here first, but that doesn't mean they have the right to go through our trashcans and make such a mess!


We've been through at least 10 different trashcans because they've gnawed big holes in all of them. We had to search high & low and finally found some metal trashcans, at $25 each.

Just to find the main culprit, we set these (humane) traps. We had one small trap, and one larger one. So far, we've caught 6 squirrels, a raccoon, and a possum (all in one week).

We're done tracking the enemy and we've removed the traps. We were just curious as to which animal was the guilty party for our trashcan mess. I guess we have our answer...ALL OF THEM!

Let's just say, we have huge critters in this area because we've been feeding them well for the past several years! They won't know what to do now that they have to rely on some other food source rather than our trash can.

Now I can get back to enjoying nature instead of being mad at them for making such a mess.

5 comments:

  1. Hey Angie! I can totally relate! Up here in N. AZ we have heards of Javalina tromping thru, deer galore, jack rabbit's a'jumpin, roadrunners running, bobcats catin', owls hooting, hawks screeching and even had a mountain lion run by in front of us on an evening walk (don't do that anymore!) and even had a bear sighting in my neighborhood last winter!! Oh!....and I'm not even gonna mention snakes, yuck, yuck, yuck!!!

    We had to put our trash cans out of critter reach too! Isn't living with nature so much fun!.....Wonder if Noah had the same problem??? lol!

    Sweet Blessings!
    Jackie

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  2. Ha. Was that the poor raccoon's last meal?

    I hope those cans work for ya! (You and I never did get to chat. I am taking little one to swim lesson this afternoon -- then we are leaving for the mountains tomorrow morning.)

    Love,
    Beth

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  3. We have some animals, deer, rabbits, squirrels and lots of cats (not ours) but they love to tease our dog because she's on a lead when outside & they know it!! lol

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  4. Hope your problem is now solved.

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  5. Oh those raccoons! They can do so much damage and are SO smart. We had catfood in a sealed plastic bucket. They couldn't open it, so they rolled it 1/4 mile across the back yard before giving up.

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