Back story, we moved into our new house a year ago from a little place called Carrollton, Texas. In Carrollton we had a typical starter home..one story..ranch style. The home was no frills, but did us a wonderful service for 10 years and we still rent it to this day and have not sold it. It was in our old house that my husband found his true talent for trapping animals that were infiltrating our yard. About every three days for a week or so we'd have some random and unassuming opposum who scampered through our yard meet its ultimate fate when my husband caught it. Oh, I failed to mention my husband is not much for hurting anything, he's sweet to the core...so the ultimate fate that I speak of was basically relocated to a better area where it could live happily ever after!
This was the norm until we were infiltrated by a racoon family. Yes, I said family. We had left food out on the back porch (enclosed fence, mind you). The racoon family (Mommy + 2 or 3 babies) decided to scale the fence and get some yumminess much to the dismay of my blind and deaf beagle. Now my fifteen year old beagle while blind and deaf can still smell like a young hound dog so she knew the racoons were in the backyard, and basically treed them! That was until the mama racoon jumped on her back. By the end of the very exciting early morning we had one racoon that had escaped into the house and wedged itself into the bookcase while the others scampered away up the tree and out of our backyard.
The racoon that got caught in the house was a baby, my husband gently ousted him with a broomstick and sent him off to safety to frolic with his brethren. Then we met big daddy who my husband called Ralphie a few weeks later. He was pilfering water out of the boat we had parked out back. The hobiecat had the wings off and water had collected in the holes and Ralphie would put his paw in and drink water from it. He was neat to watch. My husband gave him some cat food (um encourage much?) and so he would return and rest on the trampoline of the boat and eat cat food and drink..that was until one day when I came out to see Ralphie and he decided to amble after me and hiss at my husband. I guess Ralphie wanted to date me. Well, feeling that I was being theatened my husband defended me by getting a baseball bat and chasing Ralphie away. Again, no harm ever came to Ralphie at least not by our doing. One day they all just left and we never saw them again, but the neighbors at the old place said they had racoons in their attic and had called some pest service that supposedly uses air guns... I really have no idea what became of the and probably don't want to know.
Fast forward to a year later we moved into this new house last February. We moved to a newer area that was more "countrified" and a much bigger two-story house with the hopes of becoming a bigger family and having kids (despite IF-thank goodness this has worked, I would have been one lonely and sad individual in this cavernous house without a child). My husband was hellbent on having the house face North/South so our house backs up to the woods. Now, when I say woods, it's only woods for now as some farmer owns it and it is sure to be sold and turned into retail at some point in the future. I do hope it stays this way for a while though because the woodiness makes me happy!
However, with the woods comes the critters! So far in the year that we have resided her we have caught 2 opposums and 1 skunk. Well, my husband has caught the in his live catch trap. I had nothing to do with it expect coming out to see how cute they were and putting pictures on my facebook! We had a lull of about 4 months, but now we have a critter in the backyard. My husband set up the live catch trap three times now but the little bugger has opened it got into it and gotten out of it. Crafty little dude and strong too! My husband thought that the critter, whatever it might be even broke the trap at one point. Now the Hubs is on a mission to catch whatever it is. I have my money on a racoon as we have never caught one, they have hands like humans and they are pretty strong and definitely smart. So now he's designing a better way to catch whatever it is...let the games begin (again!) You would think the cat would do something about these critters...
Alas, I leave you with some raccoon humor.
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