Monday, December 14, 2009

Vermin Control

We have for several months now been fighting a battle with two of our friendly neighborhood raccoons. They sneak into the garage at night and help themselves to the cat food and water. Cute, yes. But a little irritating. It became really irritating when they, apparantly wanting more than what I was feeding the cats, tipped over the tupperware container holding the cat food and helped themselves to 5 lbs of cat food, buffet style. Three times.
And, to no one's surprise, I have had a difficult time with the mechanics of the trap door on the live trap. Sometimes simple workings elude me. In fact, I have set up and caught, then released said raccoons approximately three times. I never seem to get the trap door right. Until yesterday. Oh yes, read on....

Scene: Our bedroom, 3am this morning.

Todd is preparing to leave for work and heads out to his truck parked outside our bedroom window. Tromp, tromp, tromp, then tap, tap, tap on the window.

Todd (through the glass): "Did you move the trap? It's way down by the blackberries."

Me: "No. Check it. It probably has a cat in it."

Tromp, tromp, tromp.

Todd: "Nope. We got a 'coon! I'll get it after work."

Me: "You can't leave it there all day."

Todd: "They live outside. He'll be fine."

Me: "It's inhumane to leave him there all day. Can't you take him to work and let him go?"

Todd: "Fine."

Tromp, tromp, tromp. Back to the trap. "Ouch! Dammitt! #$%$%^ man."

Tromp, tromp, tromp. Back to the window.

Todd: "He's crazy. He went after me when I tried to pick the trap up."

Me (half asleep): "Maybe some gloves....?"

I hear a gun cock, then tromp, tromp, tromp. *pause*

BLAM. Silence.

Truck tailgate goes down. Trap in bed of truck. Tailgate goes up. Truck drives off. Hmm.

So, then I start thinking "I wonder if the neighbors called the cops?" Because that kind of behavior is normal: yelling through the windows in the middle of the night, yelling back from inside the house, tromping around, gunfire, vehicle traffic after shots are fired. Our neighbors love us. Perhaps I should call and tell them I'm OK....

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

What Do You Do When The Pigs Are Bigger Than You?

Weighing in at about 90 pounds each I don't think they're such cute little piglets anymore. And, they have this irritating habit of getting behind me whenever I go in their pen and rooting at my calves and trying to chew on my boots - a trick that was cute when they were little - not cool now that they're bigger. Plus, but the time I turn one around to shoosh one of them away another one comes around the other side headed for my other leg. I'm sure I look like an idiot tripping through the mud trying to scare the pigs away from me.


I thought I had the perfect fix to the problem: I moved their feed and water troughs close to the fence so I wouldn't even have to go in their pen anymore. I can simply dump the slop over the fence and can reach the water faucet from outside their pen. Tada!

Now, don't get me wrong: the pigs have done an amazing job of rooting up the little enclosure. It was full of burdocks and weeds and who knows what else they've dug up (rocks, sticks, stumps, bricks, nails, etc.) and they have done an amazing job making it look like a perfectly rototilled garden. That was until it started raining three weeks ago. Then it turned into, well, a pig sty! The foot of beautiful tilled dirt turned into two feet of boot-sucking, slippery-as-snot mud which is what forced me into moving the troughs against the fence. I was lucky to leave that pen alive some mornings.

Well, the two feet of hilled-up, mounded-up, stinky-ass, slicker-than-snot mud has now turned into the Himalays of frozen tundra. I kid you not: there are frozen peaks of mud and pig poo at least 3 feet tall out there. So, night before last in the freezing weather I ran out to throw some more straw in the pig house. Did you know pigs get goose bumps? Poor things....

Anyway, it was dark and I was carrying probably 20 pounds of straw through the pig pen trying to see using light from the neighbor's barn to reflect where the peaks and valleys of frozen pig poo were. A head lamp would have been smart, but I digress...

I'm trying to help these things out, ya know? And there they came: all three of them, swarming me like I was a cart of fresh produce. I got so freaked that they were going to knock me over I tripped on a peak of shit and nearly went face first into the dirt. I just kept remembering what my dad said about his friend who's own pig bit his leg and he had to have it operated on. Dear God. What have we done? I stumbled around and managed to get the straw in the house and make a speedy exit. I keep wondering though...if I'd fallen down who would have found me? Todd would have come home and found the baby watching Shrek, the dog laying there hungry and no sign of me. Because, really, we've all seen Hannibal Lecter. We know pigs eat people. And people eat pigs...it just depends on who comes out of the pen alive, right? I'm working on some kind of straw-launcher so I really never have to go in there. I'm not gonna die in there.