[TheForge] Fox news OT:

[Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer]

Switched over to using very ripe fruit for raccoons. I 
put some aviary wire over the bait tray so they have to 
work at it to get at the fruit and are more likely to 
trigger our rusty old trap. Works pretty well.

Bob Ehrenberger wrote:
> Mike,
> 
> We have a live trap, but the only thing we ever catch are our cats.
> 
> Robert Ehrenberger
> Shelbyville, Mo.
> eforge at centurytel.net
> 
> From: mspencer at tallships.ca (Mike Spencer)
> Subject: [TheForge]  Re: Fox news
> To: theforge at mailman.qth.net
> Message-ID: <201007241550.o6OFokU05632 at nudel.nodomain.nowhere>
> 
> 
>> It makes me sick, 24 dead chickens.
> 
> I know the feeling.  Since there's nothing to be done now, perhaps a
> little levity will help.
> 
> Forty or so years ago, our hens were living in a disused VW Microbus,
> maybe a dozen and a half of them.  One morning we found several of
> them dead and one gone, evidence of a raccoon as the culprit.  He was
> back the next night and got some more.  Laid for him with a shotgun
> and a live hen staked out for bait.  Missed him in the total darkness,
> scared the daylights out of the bait chicken.  Must have scared, or at
> least mildly annoyed, the 'coon because he didn't return right away.
> 
> A couple of months later, when there were big banks of snow along our
> narrow gravel road, I heard men's voices outside around 11:00 at night
> and went to investigate.  Two guys were digging their car out of the
> snow bank they'd ploughed into trying to miss a 'coon that was walking
> down the middle of the snowy road.  Dang, I thought, you coulda just,
> you know, *hit* him.
> 
> A couple of nights later, I was driving home and there the SOB was,
> boldly huffing down the middle of the road toward our hen house.  And
> I buried our old Volvo deep in the snowbank trying to hit him.  Missed.
> Dang.  So then I had to get out the shovel and dig myself out, too.
> Double-dang.
> 
> Next day, I followed the tracks.  The bastard was hiking nearly a mile
> along the middle of the road to get to the poultry counter.
> 
> Well, now we no longer keep chickens and we live-trap the 'coons to
> keep them from devastating the corn.  2008 must have been a bumper year
> for 'em because we relocated 8 'coons to the other side of the river
> five miles away.  Only one this year so far.
> 
> I kinda doubt that foxes will fall for a live trap, though.
> 
> 
> 
> - Mike
>