The beasts of the country; Postmaster's squirrel is returned safely

We are in the mountains and face continual battles with four-legged creatures who either want to reside in the house with us or dine out of our garden.  In the summer of 2004, a good friend lived with us who was assigned to rodent control after a few unfortunate situations in the garden. 

Despite various measures to keep squirrels out of the garden, we had two who, at separate times, found their way in through an open gate and had an on-going feast on our dinner.  We are all committed to eating and counted on the garden produce for food.  Our friend found a squirrel in the garden and he literally beat it to death.  This guy is as gentle as you can imagine so this animal beating represented the peak of all of our frustration over saving the dinner for ourselves. 

We decided that there was surely a better way to take care of the animal problem.  We bought live traps for the squirrels and jumbo snap traps for the rats.  Our friend relocated the squirrels to greener pastures.  And our friend relocated himself at the end of the summer and we faced the animal problem all by ourselves.

The squirrels and rats have made a come back.  Our friend came to visit and set the traps up and reminded us to check them regularly.  My mom left for a week, so she was off the hook.  Sander assigned me the job one morning as he left with Frederick.  I postured that I could do it.  What’s the big deal about checking rodent traps, right?

After hanging laundry on the line, I headed toward the first live trap.  It had a squirrel in it!  Yikes!  I started wondering what to do with it.  As I wondered, I checked the snap traps.  One trap was literally gone, dragging along behind some poor rat no doubt.  The other trap remained ready to snap. 

“What to do with the squirrel?  What to do with the squirrel?”

“Who am I mad at?  No, that’s a bad idea.”

“What to do with the squirrel?”

 

I looked at the squirrel closely and it looked familiar.  Postmaster Dean keeps a sign on the  billboard outside of the post office announcing a squirrel that had been found.  The squirrel in our cage had a striking resemblance to Dean’s squirrel and I figured that Dean’s squirrel had made its way up the hill to our house.  I called the post office and exclaimed “I found it, I found it!”  “What?”  “I’ll be right down.”  (I heard a slight knowing chuckle on the other end of the line.)

The reunion was touching.  Dean helped the animal to freedom right near the post office and reflected on the fact that it would take about 15 minutes for the squirrel to get back to our house and into our garden.

Comments

[Veronica]

We have used gopher traps with great success, our preferred being the Macabee. We also have used squirrel traps that work on a similar principal. On a small scale like yours, these work great, though they do kill the animal. On our vineyard, however, I have resorted to using Phos-toxin. Two pellets down each hole, newspaper, dirt, and they permanantly go to sleep. We have virtually irradicated ground squirrels despite being bordered by an abandoned walnut orchard.

[Veronica]

Also, to keep from losing your traps, attach a length of wire, chain, nylon twine, etc. from the trap to a metal or wood stake. Set your trap and then pound the stake into the ground well. Usually, the coyotes will just eat them there because they don't want to bother with trying to tug them off the post.