The wildlife is winning

When you live on a farm in the country, sharing your space with wild creatures comes with the territory, and for the most part that is a good thing, but this year, it sometimes feels like we are at war and the wild life is winning. 

I guess I should be pleased that the deer fence around my vegetable garden worked for 2 years keeping out the smaller critters who live close to and under the ground, with only a couple of minor repairs.  I had naively expected it would keep working.  But this year, the young plants I added to the garden consistently disappeared by the next day, and the breeches in the fence I discovered and repaired were immediately replaced by new ones.  Let me tell you, this puts Peter Rabbit in Mr. McGregor’s garden in a whole other light!  The little critters had figured out that nibbling was all it took to get through the plastic deer fence, and that young garden plants were delish!   I finally had to admit that I was going to be defeated if I didn’t make a major change.  I bit the bullet, and spent a couple of days digging an 8 inch trench around the whole garden, and burying a 3 foot tall wire mesh into the ground along the bottom of the deer fence.   So far it seems to be working, and for a moment I think I have the upper hand in that battle, although I suspect that the critters spend their nights plotting ways to overcome my new barrier. 

Despite that success, it definitely felt like I was losing a week ago when I made the error of forgetting to secure the door into the duck shed where my three young chickens were roosting at night.  With surgical precision, a raccoon took advantage of my lapse and removed one of my young chickens from the house and closed yard, leaving only a small tuft of feathers with a single drop of blood as evidence of the deed.   If you wonder how I know it was a raccoon, after moving the two remaining youngsters to the main coop, the following night I set a livetrap in the duck house, assuming the killer would return for another chicken dinner.  Let’s just say, if you have an affection for raccoons, you may not want to know the fate of that particular raccoon.   I set the trap again the next night, in case he had accomplices.  The following morning, I found a young possum in the duck house, although not in the trap.  I closed the door, to keep him (or her) in, but by the time we got back to deal with him, he was long gone.  He found an exit where a piece of screen I had attached to secure an opening in the siding had come loose.  My mom says their experience with possums in the chicken house was that they kill ALL the chickens, so I guess I should  thank the raccoon for allowing me to identify and secure a possible predator entry point into the duck house, while only harvesting one chicken.  And be glad it was the raccoon and not the possum who found its way in that first night!

And let me tell you about the red squirrels in the barn.   They definitely think they have won the war and claimed the barn for their own.  When I am inside they sit on the rafters and CHIT-CHIT-CHIT at me to go away. They have filled the barn with empty black walnut shells, evidence of the many meals they have enjoyed inside. And they watch my every move.  When I left the lid off the garbage can where I store the sunflower seeds for less than 5 minutes while I got the mama goat separated from the rest for milking, I returned to find a red squirrel sitting in the can happily munching sunflower seeds.  And every morning, when I return to the barn after a brief trip to the house to put the milk away, I find a red squirrel sitting and eating in the repurposed yogurt container I fill with seeds and alfalfa pellets so I can carry it out to encourage the goats into their field enclosure.    I thought I could beat them by putting a lid on the container.  Not so much.  

They simply chewed right through the lid.   Add to that 1) the chipmunks who will sometimes run right under my feet to get into the goat area to hunt for spilled seeds, 2) the mice, who I see almost daily, but at least have the courtesy to scurry quietly away when they see me, 3)  the bats who roost under the roof, and poop all over the pickup truck that is stored in the barn, ignoring the lovely bat house I built for them and installed on the OUTSIDE of the barn, 4) the occasional possum who wanders through, 5) the skunk I am pretty sure visited one night based on the smell the following morning, and 6) who knows what other critters are visiting that we just haven’t spotted yet.  There is little doubt that the critters have the upper hand in the barn.   And in case you think they are ‘harmless”, don’t say that to Gary, who paid the eight hundred and some dollar repair bill for replacing the fuel line they chewed through on the tractor!   Unfortunately, despite their much appreciated passion for hunting ground hogs, the dogs are totally uninterested in hunting the barn regulars, so although we know the data on outside cats and wild birds, we may have to break down and get a barn cat or two.   Sad to say, another thing the dogs DO love to hunt is barn cats.   UGH!