A New Battle Plan

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Those of you who have been following me for a while are already familiar with our on-going battle with the local critter population. Over the winter we lost several of our laying hens and are in the process of rebuilding our flock. For several months, we resorted to shutting the chickens into the coop at night and securing the small door with a brick. That solution worked once we caught and executed the raccoon who was clever enough to move the brick and open the door. However, having to remember to secure the chickens at night and then let them out into the pen again in the morning is a trifle inconvient. So, before we went on vacation several weeks ago, my husband went over the entire pen with a second layer of wire and made a valiant attempt to secure all of the weak points. That worked until this past Monday. At 2 AM my husband woke to the sound of a chicken being tortured. By the time we were armed with a flashlight and a .22 the critter had escaped leaving one disemboweled hen and another who was clearly missing feathers. So we’re back to shutting them in the coop and setting the live-trap for the perpetrator. And my husband went back over the perimeter of the pen and reinforced anything that looked large enough for a small kitten to sneak through. Tuesday morning the bait was gone and the trap was sprung but there was no beast to be seen. Raccoons are clever and if the trap is not securely anchored they are quite good at flipping the trap over and slipping out again. When he reset the trap he staked it down and blocked it between two cinder blocks. Wednesday morning the same thing I was once again faced with an empty, sprung trap (my husband has taken to responding to my morning reports with “how the #$%@^#% is it getting in.” Last night he added a cinder block to the top of the trap. My husband if off work today, so at first light we both went down to check on the trap. There, in the dim early morning light (too dim for me to take a photo) was a mid-sized, rather adorable “trash panda” (my husband’s nickname for the critters). Instead of shooting it, he opened the trap and then we watched from the outside of the pen as the raccoon went in search of an opening. He (though it may well have been a she) climbed the wire and nosed around the corners. It wasn’t until we circled around to the other side of the pen that he shot up one of the support posts and was gone. There was just enough give in the wire at the top of the post to let him out. That gap will be eliminated and the trap will be set again tonight. We’ll keep playing the game of catch-and-release until he has shown us all of the weak points. Maybe then the battle will finally be won.