Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Paw Prints and Broken Eggs...

..are what caused me to set the trap last night. On the hood of my Jeep where paw prints, too smeared to tell what they came from. In the chicken coop for the first time since the last raccoon attacks I had a nest of broken and eaten eggs. So to calm my worried mind (I don't think I can deal with another coon attack). I set the trap last night.

This morning when I got up and headed out to check the trap and let the chickens out, I had caught my prey. A young male raccoon. Who probably would have spent a few weeks eating eggs, before moving on to eating chickens. But I was not giving him the time to build up to that.

The other death this morning was started by Carmel, one of are dumpees. I had just disposed of the raccoon and was walking to the house when I saw him flipping something in the air and went over to check it out and found him with a chipmunk. Now the problem with Carmel and his brother Butterscotch is that even though they can catch and play with prey, they never learned how to kill it. So I went and grabbed Blue Eyes, how when she was younger (she is currently in her teens) was a major huntress and was known to bring home rabbits that weighed a lot more then her. So when I put her down next to the chipmunk she went right to it and got bitten. It appears in her old age she isn't fast enough not to get bitten, so after a few tries she went the heck with this and came over for some loving.

Carmel's play with it had put it in the state where, there was no helping it and since Blue Eyes couldn't do it anymore, I need it to put the poor thing out of its misery. So I headed over to the garden and grabbed one of the big rocks I had dug up this spring and headed back over.  And with one quick smash it was over for the poor little chipmunk.

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