Editor’s Note by Marie Elium: My tenuous relationship with animals has evolved over the past six decades.
Take snakes: garter, water, rat snakes — all helpful and harmless yet terrifying when I encountered those and their kin in my flower bed, along a bike path or on a river bank.
A bit of amateur exposure therapy (I followed snake Facebook pages for nearly a year) helped a lot. A recent health diagnosis pushed me over the edge. When you face something that’s soul-crushing scary for real, snakes are nothing. I’ve relocated three this year from my garden pond.
The reptile situation is under control. But at the risk of abusing a metaphor, it’s the mammals that bug me now. My yard is in the middle of a small village, but it’s edged by woods and their critters. We’re dealing with an army of groundhogs that are digging their way under porches and outbuildings, mostly our neighbors’ but they’re scouting ours, too, and making inroads.
We have at least three litters of rabbits — kits, they’re called, in case you were wondering — that suddenly appear at our feet or near the edge of a flower pot. We don’t have a dog, so that explains their boldness, and they’re behaving themselves with my plants. I hope that lasts.
Deer haven’t found my yard yet, but my busy village location is probably a factor. For all of you who suffer through hosta-chomping deer that decimate your gardens, you have my sincere sympathy. My cousin strung fishing line throughout the woods behind his house; he was the only thing that tripped on it. He ran outside in his bathrobe one night when a deer showed up on his Ring camera. He fell and hurt his shoulder. The deer skipped away.
I’m not fishing-line crazy yet, but I can relate to the angry night runs.
I’ve got red, gray and black squirrels in my yard who treat it like they own it. I fill a bird feeder with cheap seeds away from my good feeders as an appeasement, hoping they take the bait — literally and figuratively.
Snakes, groundhogs, rabbits, squirrels. All are annoying in their own ways, but the raccoon is the worst. I think it’s his boldness, coming out at night, defying my anti-squirrel arsenal of wires and poles, gorging himself on my pretentiously expensive bird seed.
How do I know this? I’ve watched it in real time on the bird feeder camera that the kids got me for Christmas. During the day, it’s fun to spy on the cardinals and nuthatches. But things turn dark in the night. The camera microphone is so sensitive that I can hear the raccoon chomping on my fruit/seed mix, sometimes greedily shaking the feeder.
I’ve left my bed and run into the yard to chase him away, knowing that it wouldn’t be a fair fight if I actually caught up with him mid-theft. His claws are longer than my nails. And I don’t want to explain an E.R. visit to my oncologist. That’s him, the raccoon, not my doctor, in the photo.
After a little research, I bought a clever squirrel-proof feeder that closes the seed holes when anything heavier than a bird is on it. The raccoon climbed down from the top and scooped out seed like he’d done it all his life.
I’ve since suspended the feeder farther away from my bird camera and put the camera in an electrical box with a clear window. With its launching pad gone, the raccoon appears to have moved on to easier food sources. I’ll keep you posted.
Next up: autumn, or the Indoor Animal Season, as I prefer to call it. First come the mice. The bats arrive in early October and surprise us throughout the winter, moving from their home in our attic, down through a pocket door and into the downstairs.
Some people mark the changing of seasons with cheery outdoor decor and a cozy blanket on the couch. I move the snake net into the house where it becomes my bat net. For the record, bats look bigger when they’re flying. I’ve gotten rather good at catching them and releasing them into the night air. They’re likely back in my attic before I shut the door.
That’s my history with animals, at least the ones that reside inside and outside my house. Someday, I’ll give you my hot take on horses and pandas.
It’s getting late, and I’m wrapping this up. My bed is calling: I’ve got a long night of raccoon patrol ahead of me.
Joan
I wish squirrels were our only problem. They’ve made our back yard into a “tank trap” with burying their nuts from our only tree….Our REAL PROBLEM is the SKUNKS that “PERFUME” our outside bedroom wall (the wall that the head of our bed is against…and can’t be moved.) That’s not the biggest problem for us…(and $$ bill) at an Emergency Vet Clinic, if our dog gets nailed by a skunk (ours got it in the eye.) My husband has trapped in the past, but getting too old to handle getting rid of them after. Our County will do nothing. Nor will they do anything when the coyotes threaten neighborhood pets.