Pesky Possum

We've lived out in the country for ten years now. In those ten years we have seen a wide variety of wildlife from turkeys and deer to coyotes and snakes. What I haven't seen is a possum.....or opossum or however you want to spell it. I see them dead on the side of the road but that's about it. So I was kind of excited when I opened up the drapes to see this:

A real, live possum not two feet outside the sliding glass door! It was cool. Interestingly enough the cats weren't even phased by it standing there eating their cat food. They might have been thinking "if we don't move it won't see us." Because they weren't moving, not even a little bit.

So once it found the cat food it decided we weren't half bad and decided to hang around for a couple of days. For those two days things weren't too great in our house. Having three territorial dogs living in the house with a marauding possum just outside the glass door made for a very loud situation. So much barking. I couldn't take it anymore. I jumped in my car and went to the local farm and ranch store to pick up a catch and release trap. $24.99 later I got home, baited it with a can of cat food and waited. I locked up our cats in the shop so I wouldn't accidentally catch them. 

The next morning I eagerly peeked outside the window and laughed when I found this:

The neighbors cat. Doh. He wasn't too thrilled as you can see. I kept it baited but failed to catch the pesky possum. In fact, I haven't seen him since. He must have wandered on his way, in search of more tasty cat food somewhere else.

Happy New Year?

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you are ringing in your new year on a better note than we are in our household. The dreaded stomach bug from hell has been visiting for the past few days. I swear I've never washed more bedding in my life. The washing machine has been going for the past two days without stopping. Greta threw up on Wesley's bed, then Wesley threw up all over his bed then it hit Sean and I. Luckily we've just been queasy....so very queasy. Like a roller coaster ride you just never can get off of. I ventured out to WalMart yesterday for my weekly food run, the whole time wishing and hoping I wasn't the cause of "clean up on isle 4". Luckily, I made it home without losing my lunch....oh wait, I haven't eaten much of anything in days....not much chance of losing anything.

Not a whole lot happening around here. I thought I'd share my newest rodent story. Yes, I know more rodent stories. I seem to be fixated on them. But I swear I've never had so many issues with them until recently. I'm starting to think Kitty did more to keep them at bay then I thought she did before she passed away. Anyways, while we were out of town for Christmas my friend Jessica came over to feed the animals. She's a life saver in the fact that I don't know of anyone else that would be willing to come over and feed the 20+ animals that we have. We'd never go anywhere without your help, thank you Jessica! Unfortunately things seem to happen when she comes to take care of the animals. Not her fault of course, just bad timing. The morning I left, I noticed one of the chickens wasn't walking very well. This hen has done this before and recovers just fine so I didn't worry too much. I asked Jessica to look in on them that evening. She came over, after dark, wearing a head lamp (you know, those flashlights you wear on your head?). She opened the door to the hen house and had the feeling that the floor was moving. She focused her headlamp on the floor and the ground was covered with mice, all of which stopped what they were doing and looked up at her before flooding the door way and spilling out onto her boots. She said there were so many she couldn't count. The whole time resisting the urge to scream like a little girl. *shiver* Poor Jessica. I knew we had a mouse problem in the hen house but I didn't know it was to that extent. She went in after the automatic light had gone off for the night and the hens were all roosting for the evening. I don't go out that late so I think I was oblivious to the problem (I'm going to tell myself that anyways).

So I decided to declare war on the mice. If you'll remember we built the hen house in the shop with an outside aviary attached. Things I didn't realize when doing this is that we are providing a prime real estate location to hundreds of mice. They live in the shop and go into the hen house to feed on all of the uneaten chicken food (chickens are very messy). I even have a constant supply of heated water in there. Plus our shop kitty passed away this fall so they don't even have predators. Well, they have me I guess (insert evil laughter).  Two nights ago I placed 24 mouse traps on the floor around the hen house. It took half an hour and while I was baiting the traps (with peanut butter) I actually caught two mice. By the next evening I had caught 23 mice. Twenty three! So, I bought 16 more traps yesterday and will probably catch 16 more mice by tomorrow. Yuck. Talk about wiping out the population. I will just keep traps out there at all times from now on.

Oh and that chicken that wasn't walking well? She was dead by the next morning and her sisters had cannibalized her. They literally ate her. So poor Jessica had to scrape her half eaten frozen body off of the ground. Apparently caged chickens (non free range like mine) are prone to cannibalizing each other. Even after seven years out here with animals there are still things that surprise me. Let us all hope the new year brings fewer disgusting animal stories. Or maybe I should just stop sharing them?

A Sticky Situation

I'm starting to wonder if strange rodent related problems only happen to me, or if people just don't talk about it. Yesterday morning I'm awoken to the sound of tiny thumping. Immediately I think of the glue trap under the bed. Yes, I bought a pack of glue traps to try and catch some of the brown recluse spiders we have in the house. For some reason we have quite the problem with them in our bedroom in the summer. I never thought we had mice in our bedroom. So anyways, I peek under the bed to find this mouse dragging the glue trap around by its tail. Only its tail was stuck. I jumped out of bed and ran into the kitchen to get a container so I could catch him and get his tail out of the glue before he got his whole body stuck. Sadly by the time I got back to the bedroom he had firmly planted all four feet in the glue. I felt awful. Poor little thing was freaked out trying to get out. Darn glue traps, what was I thinking? I actually thought about donning oven mitts and trying to use rubbing alcohol to get his little feet unstuck. Yeah, that idea flew out the window when I saw how freaked out he was. So I did the only humane thing I could think of at the moment. I used tongs and picked up the trap, slid it into a empty Teddy Grahams box and popped it all in the freezer. I know, I know.....horrible. But I figured he would just go to sleep instead of sitting on that trap for days starving to death. This will haunt me for months I'm sure.

Ironically, after I'd put him in the freezer, I Googled "Mouse on a sticky trap" to find that there are several ways to remove a mouse from a glue trap. The most popular method is to place the trap with mouse in a lidded container and drizzle some vegetable oil on the trap. Apparently in a matter of minutes the mouse will be able to work itself free. The problem? You then have an oil covered mouse in a box. I couldn't exactly dump it outside in the 29 degree weather. Poor thing would have just turned into a popsicle anyways. I suppose I could have given him a nice bubble bath and blow dry before sending him on his way, but somehow I don't think that would have worked. So please learn from my mistakes, don't use glue traps. Oh and I'm never going to look at a box of Teddy Grahams the same again.