The average cartoon watching child in
this country has been led to believe that the raccoon is a polite,
intelligent, highly hygienic member of the animal kingdom. Well, I am
here to tell you that pound for pound raccoons are the most devious,
cunning and disgusting creatures on earth.
What Rocky Raccoon and Ranger Rick failed
to convey to the kids is that raccoons tip over trash cans, walk in wet
cement, dig up gardens and have been known to kill small dogs. For
three months now I have been trying to keep them from digging for
earthworms in my newly planted lawn.
I must admit that I first tried poison
but I soon discovered that any poison that would give a field mouse a
mild belly ache has been taken off the market. All I succeeded in doing
in putting out poisoned grain was to attract four more families of
coons. I could have tried to shoot the masked bandits but they work
after business hours and I didn't feel like staying up all night every
night. Besides, I had more compassion than that.
So I borrowed a "Warm and Fuzzy, Humane,
Safe and Easy Wild Animal Trap" from a neighboring rancher. They are so
named because they take into consideration the welfare of the animal.
And you don't have to feel guilty about using the Humane Trap because
you won't catch anything anyway.
Oh, that's not quite true. The first
night I loaded up the trap with the recommended bait. Dog food. Sure
enough I caught the neighbor's dog. The second night I switched to cat
food and caught a cat. I quickly learned that the secret to using the
trap was to stay up until all the other animals had gone to bed for the
night and then put it out. This required staying up till two in the
morning.
For weeks I was foiled by the coons. I
would wake early and rush to the window to see if we had caught any of
the pests who were destroying my lawn. And every morning the results
were the same. The bait would be gone, there would be several new holes
in my lawn and the trap would be empty. The escape artists knew how to
use the trap better than I did.
You can imagine the excitement in our
house the morning we thought we caught our first Houdini of the night.
The elation was short lived however because it turned out to be a Red
Fox who just happened to be in a very bad mood after having spent the
night in cramped quarters and getting showered periodically by my
automatic lawn sprinklers.
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