Busy Days

Tuesday the girl helped set up for a fancy tea party.  Then Wednesday she helped waitress for the same.

Yesterday we went to the lake to celebrate early the birthday of one of my best friends.

Just before we went to the lake yesterday, I took a call from a man who had a family of skunks living under a shed situated under his deck very tight to his home.  So Jay and I rushed over and set three traps.

This morning he called–all the traps were full.  We both went and loaded the traps into the truck, then I went and took care of the wee beasties.

And they were wee. And cute.  But fully ‘armed’. It turned out we caught four young skunk kittens.  No mother.  The man has his own trap so he will catch her tonight, probably.

Of a Rooster and a Jumping Mouse

Sunday morning Jay and I let out a rooster who had been living alone in a raised pen for an unknown length of time.  A long time. He was beautiful and we felt sorry for him, and Sue did too.  And since she is not around right now to watch him get beat up by the other roosters we agreed it was a happy circumstance for all.

Well, maybe not so happy for the rooster.  He immediately started fighting the the largest rooster of similar coloring–think of a small Kellog’s Corn Flakes rooster. And then, after Jay broke up that go round, he started in with one of the white roosters.  He could have beat that one, if he had not been so tired from fighting all out with the first rooster.  Eventually he retreated to under the car.  Until Jay had to pull him apart from another rooster in the tall grass.

We think he had a very long day.

Yesterday evening he kept to the road edge, maybe even straying into the road, as cars were slowing down quite a bit in front of the house.  I was rather concerned, but Jay was not and we were busy carting hens from the portable cage into their evening pen.  Afterward I could not find the rooster and Jay conciliated me saying the bird would roost in the trees and keep to the short grass.

A new day.  And as I pull up to the Sue’s home at 7.30AM, there is a white van sitting in the driveway.  An anxious woman gets out and wants to know if “we are the ones with chickens”?  Guess who almost got run over by her?  And who, as we speak, is standing on the side of the road, or running into it as cars on the way to work go whizzing past?  You guessed!  That old rooster.

It was my turn at conciliation.  And then I chased that rooster down, cars and trucks coming to a standstill or slowing down, me feeling like a fool.  I finally directed him into the lawn and the expanse of grass and, perhaps, his unease at being in other rooster’s territory, slowed him down enough for me to grab him.

He is this moment residing with a lone hen in a small pen near the barn.  He will stay there for the time being.  Maybe he has to learn to be part of a group? To stay near the barn?  To avoid cars–for sure.  Maybe he and the hen can form their own unit.  She just lost her rooster when it attacked Sue just before her vacation and it came home with us to the soup pot.

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Also this morning, as I was getting in the car to go tend animals, Pounce ambled across the blueberry patch and placed something down, then looked at me so I got out and went over to look at the unfortunate object of his attention.

It was a juvenile kangaroo mouse.  I took it and put it in the egg pail.  Pounce was recompensed with a dab of peanut butter off my forefinger.  I took the mouse up to Sue’s and put it in a glass aquarium with shavings and dried grass which had held a white mouse we had kept at our home.  Until we fed it to the Corn Snake last Tuesday morning.

The kangaroo mouse was still alive when I left an hour later and seemed to be recovering use of its right foreleg.

I like kangaroo mice.

Batman

Thursday I  fielded a call from the owner of a large car dealership in town.  He had gotten our number from the County Health Dept.  He had a bat in his house.

Fortunately for him, Jay was home that day, took the job after speaking with him, and went over to the home right away.

Jay searched all the likely places.  No bat in closets, drapes, corners, cubbies.

He stood thinking and decided to flip through a quilt folded up and laying on a sofa.  And caught the bat as it crawled out from between the folded layers.

The man’s wife was very thankful.

Skunks, Anyone?

While I am on the subject of trapping, I may as well inform you about the skunk job I had recently.  One morning this older gentleman called, and after ensuring I was indeed a Nuisance Wildlife Control Operator for the State Department of Environmental Conservation (the capital letters make it seem so much more impressive, don’t you think?), he informed me that he would pay whatever it cost to have me come trap whatever it was which was digging up his front lawn.  He had had enough.  This could not go on.

Well, skunks like to dig for grubs in the lawn this time of year.  Even if you have paid some lawn guy to come spread grub control stuff.  The skunks know if the grubs are there, control stuff or no.

So we went.  K. wanted to go with me.  Really.  She says she likes the smell of skunks.  We set three traps.  The two set on the lawn were placed on plywood so if a skunk was trapped it would not totally ruin the monoculture of green expanse by digging furiously through the bottom holes during the rest of the night to gt out.

The owner wanted to know if I thought the areas covered with little holes could possibly be the work of only one skunk.  I thought if I was a skunk, had all night and was hungry, yes, I could easily dig that much.  But I did not say that.  So we trapped four nights and caught a total of three skunks.

The last skunk was a reverse skunk.  It was white with a black stripe.

And no, we did not get sprayed.  I am a professional, after all.  All three were re-located and released.

How to be Popular

Yesterday morning bright and early, Audrey called.  It was a phone call in which she pleaded with me to come visit her right away.  Lest you assume I am such a charming witty person that friends call me before breakfast just to beg for my company, I will let you in on a secret: it was not a social call.

She had a bat flying in her very high-ceilinged living room.  She had come downstairs from bed to see it crawling on her fireplace screen.   Her voice was admirabley under control when I spoke to her.

So I called my husband for a supply list of necessary bat-removing items: net, heavy gloves, hooded sweatshirt, wide-mouthed quart canning jar with lid.  I also took K.  She wanted to come.  Really.

Audrey’s husband was on the scene when we arrived.  He had taped the fireplace over with a piece of black plastic.  Audrey was out the door, leaving.  She said it was an appointment.

K and I examined the fireplace by removing only part of the plastic.  I could hear the bat.  And then I could see the bat.  After lots of trial and error and discussion on our part, in the end the bat made it easy.  It fell between the fireplace and the metal flange enclosing the fireplace, crawled through the gas line hole and out a half-inch space in the front.  I met it with the open glass jar.

The bat was really active and quite small. We took it home to show the children.  It was eventually released and crawled away.  Perhaps it was confused?