Skunk In The Garden

For several nights an animal had been rooting around in my wife’s cutting garden. This is serious stuff in our household. The cutting garden doesn’t often get cut because Dorothy really can’t bear to disturb the symmetry of the flowers in the garden. Unknown night time cutters are not something that are acceptable.

The night time marauders were not easily identified. Deer eat from the top down and these cuttings were at the bottom. No rodent burrows were evident and no scat or footprints were there to aid in our investigation. It was time to bring out the Have a Heart live trap. We use this to ease our life in the mountains when the Wood Rats (pack rats) chip monks and other rodents get too feisty or multiply at an unreasonable rate that exceeds the neighborhood foxes mitigation capability. There is a totally wild patch a few miles down the canyon which we call Buck’s Wildlife Repository. If I move animals they all go to this spot. My son gets upset if he thinks I am separating families, so they all go to the same spot. I picture family Wood rat reunions taking place each Spring down the canyon.

I set the trap last night and was rousted out of bed this morning by wife yelling that there was a big problem in the garden. The problem was vexing but not big There was a skunk in the Have a Heart double door live trap. I was not about to handle this problem without professional advice. So we called the State Department of Wildlife office for advice.
That office is some distance away and the phone was answered by a voice that was deep slow and drawling. It had a reverb quality that was probably caused by the voice bouncing off a big cowboy hat into the speaker end of the phone.

The Dept of Wild Life suggestions went as follows in a slow pace:

Go to Wal-Mart and buy a blue tarp—Cut it in half and put one half over the trap—cut a slit over the handle so you can pick it up and set it down on the other half of the tarp.
Take duct tape and tape everything together.

If you have a lawn mower or an old car run a hose from the exhaust into the tarp covered trap.
We told him that we couldn’t bring ourselves to do that solution.

He said , “no lawn mower, no old car hmmmm.”

He then asked if we were far enough in the country to use our firearms. He was surprised that we had no firearms handy. This Colorado Cowboy was determined to help and was not out of solution suggestions. He then asked if we had a wash tub deep enough to put the trap in to totally immerse it.

Armed with only his helpful suggestions we thanked him and said we would consider the options.

Shortly after this my son showed up with a bunch of our grandkids to watch while he did a little fly fishing in the creek in front of our house. Hearing about the skunk he checked it out in the trap. He said he would solve our skunk problem before catching a few trout. (I think he was a little worried that in a desperate moment we might try one of Wild Life Bill’s suggestions.) He threw a sheet over the trap , grabbed the handle through the sheet , marched a mile down the canyon crossed the road and released the skunk which beat a quick path into the woods.

I hope the skunk was traumatized enough to find another garden to root around in. We might have to consider some Dept. of Wildlife suggestions–NOT

My city friends still don’t understand how I have lived in the mountains for nearly a decade without the challenges of East Coast big city life. There are challenges here but, their nature is often simply involved with Nature. A simple sheet handled things without shots being fired.