Bait, Set, and Cat—I Mean Catch!

Now, down to twelve chickens, we decided enough was enough.  Something had to be done!  The chickens all happened to miraculously be in the coop at once, so Jeremy quickly locked them inside.  Then, having given up on the idea of making our own raccoon trap, he caved and bought one from the feed store, while I went to the local plaid pantry and picked up the ‘stinkiest’ wet cat food I could find. 

That night, we set and baited the trap, then waited anxiously for morning.  Early the next day, as the sun was rising, I woke up (Jeremy wakes up early so he’d already been up for a while).

“Did we catch anything?”  I asked him.

“We caught something.  I just can’t tell what it is.”

I ran to the window like a kid runs to the tree on Christmas morning to see what Santa’s left.  And sure enough, dimly visible through the early morning light there was something black and white inside.  Oh joy!  Finally, we’ve done it! 

As the sun progressed behind the hill, I squinted at the trap.  Aside from the coloring, the thing inside looked too small to be a raccoon.  Plus, it didn’t have the telltale mask over its eyes.  Actually, its stance suggested something much more feline. 

“Ummm…it looks like a cat.”  I told my husband, who was now standing next to me, coffee mug in hand.

Sure enough, it was!  We’d caught one of the wild cats in the area.  This particular wild cat had been coming into our groffice (a mix of garage and office), and had been starting fights with our Orange cat (yes, orange is his name, guess what kind of cat he is), and eating his food.   Plus, this cat has had several litters in the past year alone—not Orange, the other one.   

Deflated, I stared at the stupid cat, now soaking wet from having been sitting in the trap, in the rain for lord knows how long.

“Should we shoot it?”  Jeremy asked, putting on his best hick accent.

Stupid cat.  And no, for those animal rights activists who are wondering… we didn’t shoot it.  We weren’t out to do the country folk a favor by killing all of the wild neighborhood cats, so we decided to let the thing go.  Thanks to our mercy, she will live to procreate another day.

Note:  If you ever set out to catch a raccoon, and end up catching a wild cat, don’t shoot it, and don’t let it go.  Take it to the humane society for crying out loud!  Sigh…this last thought didn’t occur to us until around lunch time. 

Well, at least it was the same color as the raccoon.  Plus, for the first time in weeks, we didn't lose even one chicken that night, hurray!  That’s a start, right?  RIGHT?

What’s your advice on how to catch a killer raccoon?

Raccoons…the Silent Killer

When we first got chickens, we started out with five hens, so that we could have our own organic, free range eggs.  Then, this year we added about thirty more to the flock.

One frosty northwest morning about a month ago, I was shocked and horrified to find several trails of feathers around our back yard, and three chickens missing.  Many of our newer hens took to sleeping up in the trees (discovered one evening when I was searching the yard for our chickens, and heard little rustling noises above my head.  Imagine my surprise to look up and see them all perched on the limbs of our big plum tree.)

The three hens that went missing happened to be some of the ones that sleep in the trees.  After three years of raising chickens, this was the first time that we’d ever experienced an attack or loss (not counting the chicken that hung herself on our fence…a story for another day.) 

 So for the next several nights, we were on high alert.  Whenever our dogs barked, we’d let them outside (my husband with his gun at the ready), and they’d go on a mad chase after some wild animal.  Out here we have several different predators…coyotes, bob cats, mountain lions and bears, oh my!  We knew that whatever was getting our chickens had to be something that could climb trees…which pretty much limits it to some kind of large cat or raccoons.  

 I can picture those poor little birds, blissfully slumbering, only to be rudely awakened by a grab around their legs, or maybe a sharp tooth in the neck…not the way you want to go. 

Well, why didn’t you put those chickens in their coop at night, you ask?  Great question.   Because we were stupid at the beginning…and now we couldn’t catch all of them! 

And here is my first tip about chickens.

Chicken Tip  #1

As soon as the baby stage is over (where they need chick food and constant warm light), introduce them to the flock at night, in the coop…oh, and have a coop door that locks shut!

A few weeks ago, after some fresh snow fall, we found out what was really attacking our chickens.  A trail of little hand prints led right up to our coop. By this time, the rascals were plucking chickens straight out of the coop…we didn’t even think they could fit in! 

It was of course, a raccoon, otherwise dubbed by me as the silent killer.

To be continued…

The Tale of the Turkey

Two hands clutched around the hatchet, I eyed the fifty pound turkey splayed out on my counter, freshly plucked and gutted three days ago.  Our sweet turkey, the one we’d raised since he was a week old, the one who hobbled after us, gobbling “hrrrgghhrooo.”  Translation:  Feed me, feed me! 

And now, there I was, knuckles white, trying to figure out the best place to strike, so it would fit inside the oven, and once cooked,  could “hrrrgghhrooo” me.  When you swing an ax, you definitely don’t want to flinch and look away as you bring it down, like you’re praying it won’t accidentally miss and hit you in the nether region.   I have a bad habit of closing my eyes each time someone tosses a football at me, so I have to make a greater effort than most to keep my eyes open when swinging an ax.

With one deep breath, I brought the blade down, with what I thought was a pretty hefty swing.  Nope, hardly dented the thing.  All that first swing accomplished was to cause my turkey to slide off the cutting board and onto the counter.  Again and again the blade came down, sometimes in the same spot, but for the most part somewhere nearby, until eventually, the bone gave up, and splintered.   Turkey juice sprayed my face, and the turkey itself…mutilated is the only word to describe the horrific scene.  It’s about this time that I wondered…how the hell did I become such a heathen? 

Seven years ago, if someone had told me I would be living the country life, canning, raising chickens, running away from roosters, chasing after roosters with a stick shaped like a baseball bat, butchering and eating these same birds,  chasing the goats out of the chicken coop, trying to figure out how not to get gored by a gigantic bull elk, and getting a phone call from the neighbor informing me that a bear is on the way to our front steps, I would have laughed, or gagged, or both.  I didn’t believe in hunting, and I certainly would never have imagined myself capable of gutting a chicken, let alone trying to figure out a way to fit the world’s largest turkey into my oven, but there you have it. 

You see, the day we butchered him, I went out and bought a couple of turkey sized oven bags.  When I opened it up, I realized that while they say “turkey bag”, what they really mean is, “Only for puny Cornish hen turkeys, not for freakishly mutated giant turkeys .”   Of course Jeremy (my husband), convinced that we could fit the mutated giant turkey into the Cornish hen bag, shoved it inside.  And…it did fit.  For about two seconds, because as soon as I picked it up, the thing broke free, and slid across the floor.  Oh joy.

So, the morning before I took an ax to the turkey, I had a nice chat with my neighborhood Safeway butcher, in the hope that he could enlighten me as to how to fit the damn bird into my oven.   When I told him the size, he laughed.   Once he composed himself, he looked at me and said, “Oh you’re serious.  Ummm…how the hell did you get a fifty pound turkey?”  Yep.  He was super helpful. 

And then, back home again, dejected, staring at the damn bird, I called Mom.  “Why don’t you use a hatchet?”  She said. 

This time, it was me laughing.  “No way!  I’ll use my knife.”

Yeah, right!  It didn’t take long for me to realize that the knife just wasn’t going to cut it…no pun intended.  Actually, it damn near broke my knife.  So, to the hatchet I turned.

Once finished, I froze half of the turkey meat, and put the remaining half in a turkey bag…which it now fit into.  We ate it the night before Thanksgiving, and do you know what?  It tasted fantastic! 

Still, for the first time in my life, I am left with the question.  How the hell did I get here?  How did I go from wimpy little girl to bad ass turkey slayer?  Perhaps Jeremy put it best when he said, “ When you met me, your life course was forever altered.”