Easily slice me open with your savage nature.... Aye but then turn around and melt my heart with those beady brown eyes!!!
BUTTER!!!! I'm butter, I tell ya!!!"
If you have been following the blog you know that I have been obsessing over my mystery predator.... and when I say obsessing I'm not exaggerating! I Heart Mysteries!
If you need to be caught up to speed read Adventures in Tracking.
After consulting a few of my tracker pals, I was told to sweep the site (under the shed roof of our barn) and then place the bait in the center. Clearing the site should give me a better imprint of the tracks. I also left my live trap baited.
This morning I woke to a beautiful morning. It was 47 degrees here, with beautiful clear skies. I walked slowly down to the barn enjoying my morning stroll.
Last evening was the third night of baiting the live trap. I came up empty each time. So I really wasn't expecting anything.... O but there was a different feel in the air today! Something was going to be very different!
And to my surprise!!!!!
"Well, well, well, what do we have here", I said with great joy.
"So you have been the one causing my barn yard to stir".
"Your the one that ate my beloved Jeeves and Belvedere"....
Then this friendly Virginia Opossum looked up at me, with those little marble eyes, and cute fuzzy smoke colored furry face, and would ya just look at that adorable dirty pink little nose!?!?! and
"O crapOla, Im melting.......................... I'm Just butter"!
I didn't have my camera on me and after all the hoopla and such, how could I catch something and then not share it with all of you!?!?!?!? So I had to walk back up to the house.
I knew that once I returned to the house that Lee would quiz me about the uncontrollable smug grin across my face. (If I could have quit smiling I would have.)
O yes, he knows me very well! He would know that I have caught something in my trap!
I wondered, " O NO! What shall I do"!?
Lee doesn't enjoy killing things. He hunts but its not something that he obsessively enjoys.... but in this circumstance.... Lee was Not going to be butter.
Well in the end, sure I had to bat my eye lashes and talk in my real sweet southern draw... and I did listen to his half hearted stern voice say, "WE ARE NOT RAISING ANIMALS TO FEED TO THE WILDLIFE", but see the thing about Lee is well... when it comes to me, he IS butter!
I know that I am just prolonging the inevitable. I can think of a million reasons why I couldn't. Why I didn't.... To name a few; I think the opossum must be my animal spirit. I have said it a million times over, "they just have a soft spot in my heart that other furry creatures don't have".... They are fascinating creatures to me. North Americas only Marsupial!
Can you blame an animal for surviving... for eating??? I mean, I like chicken too!!!!! I eat it all the time!
I'm grasping at straws here I know... and the thing about straws, is that eventually someone draws the short one...
until another day.....
BUT until another day....
I have to admit - when I saw butter and oppossum, I thought I might see sweet potatoes, too! Maybe the little bugger will be scared off now. Back to the chicken raising soon?
ReplyDeleteCasey- Your comment cracked me up! :D
ReplyDeleteWe still have our hens and a lone rooster.... I'll just have to be more careful if I decide to give free ranging another shot. :)
I've heard of possums called a lot of things, but I don't think "cute" was one of them. LOL. They are so rare around here that I didn't even think of one being your chicken thief. Hope you took it far from home to turn it loose, or it WILL be back.
ReplyDeleteBob,
ReplyDeleteFirst for everything right Bob, and after all beauty is in the eye of the beholder. ;)
I don't know if I am completely convinced that this was the culprit. With my experience Opossums tend to be opportunist and slightly lazy, although thats not to say that it didn't reap in some of the rewards of my dead roosters. Yes and I am sure it will be back... and hopefully by then it will be Lee that checks the trap. I think its going to be inevitable but I just didn't have the heart for it. :)
What a strange creature. Doesn't look like a killer.
ReplyDeleteI don't think this possum is what was getting your chickens. With you saing that it didn't eat all of the one, I'll bet it's a coon. If you want to try and catch a coon, bait your trap with maple syrup or sardines. I've never lost a chicken to a possum. Eggs yes, but chickens no. Also in my experience coons will sometimes kill them just to kill them and a weasel or mink for sure will. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh, what a sucker I am. That opossum is SOOO cute. The close up shot in the cage, and then the walking away, tail up, one. I'm so glad you went back and got your camera! I wouldn't necessarily want one around, but truly, they ARE pretty dang cute. And I KNOW my husband wouldn't agree!!! :)
ReplyDeleteOh, I know how you feel, you love your chickens, and are sooo upset with the murderous, villains that are perpetrating the dirty deeds. But when you catch the culprit, it's like.... okay now what do I do with it?? I CAN'T kill it! I've had the same dilemma for weeks, (until I got Ursula). But I don't think the possum was the predator either. Possums really prefer the easy meal. I am going for fox or raccoon. Ours was a fox. We never did catch him, but he moved on to other hunting grounds.
ReplyDelete