Gutter cleaning. We got a couple of wheelbarrow loads of compost out of it: gutter-guard keeps the big stuff out, and the chaff composts really nicely. Darn the luck.
I meanwhile hauled out the garbage, the recyclables, and the yard clippings, and clipped the roses back pretty severely, piling mulch over them. We’re due for a 20 degree night.
OSG told us a pond near Joan lost its koi to a raccoon. We’re going after some repellant. But I think one may already have tried and failed with our guys. A koi site says that a raccoon will not swim after fish, because it can’t catch them that way, but will stand on the bank and try to claw one to it. Well, our bank is a little steep, it is rocky, and the koi in cold weather prefer to be down deep, under, moreover, the hyacinth-ring (a floating ring that keeps water hyacinth out of the filter. We came out to find a plant ripped out, near the shore, and one hyacinth very improbably floating on its own where the plant had been—and we’re a little suspicious a night-raiding raccoon may have taken an unplanned bath. We still have all our koi. But we are taking no chances, and are getting the repellant.
In our area they don’t want us to relocate anything.
Use the havaheart traps (which require a license) and then take the whole thing to the animal control. And leave them. Expensive trap and all – after all the license is only good for one animal anyway.
So that is not what I do.
Have a lot of troublesome chipmunks.
Use the Havaheart to trap them.
But take them to the park and let them loose there – 6 miles from me.
And I do this about 20-25 times a year.
Keep on seeing more chipmunks though.
Recently things have got better.
Hawks are now in our skies.
Yoo Hoo.
I have to admit, when I was having a problem with some ground squirrels, I did the havaheart trap, and then the really hard part… drop trap and squirrel into a bucket of water. They are in no danger of becoming extinct out here, and relocating them just moves the problem to someone else’s yard. And, if there is a natural area around, it’s already got its own resident squirrels, so transplanting them means that either the one I move dies or it displaces one that dies. But it is a hard thing to do, drowning them. The box traps for the gophers are nicer, because they are dead when you pull the trap out, and you are just getting rid of the body. All of which get thrown over the wall to the wild area, where there are hawks and crows and coyote. Which is why I don’t do poisons… I’d hate for the predators to eat poisoned prey that wandered into that area.