Our neighbour saw a possum a few nights ago so he set up a small live animal trap in our front garden. It was armed with a peanut butter sandwich.
I peeked out early this morning, and yes, there was an animal in the trap.
Problem was, that it was not a possum! It was a SKUNK.
At that stage there was no bad odour around, so I phoned the neighbour to alert him to the facts. Dang, his wife answered the phone and advised me he had gone to church and would not be back home until around midday.
I was not going to go anywhere near the thing, and we had people coming later this morning and we certainly did not want a bad smell around.
My wife had the presence of mind to phone the local Live Animal Control centre. And, Sunday morning, we managed to find someone on the phone.
About 45 minutes later, a young woman, (about 23 years old, dressed in t-shirt, shorts and wearing flip-flops – no sign of the protective gear we expected) arrived and assessed the situation. She sneeked over to where the trap was and peeked around the garden wall at it.
Then she came back and assured us that she would take care of it!
We withdrew back into the house and were dreading what would happen.
It seems she managed to cover the cage with a sheet of plastic, and then proceeded, with much caution, to anaesthetise the beast.
It took about 15 minutes, and she soon had the sleeping animal in a small bag.
She certainly knew what she was doing, and looked as if she had done so many times before.
Reminds me of an occasion, back in Western Australia about 40 years ago, when my Father set a trap near a hole in our back garden. He used a rat trap like this:-
We approached the trap the next day and could not make out just what was in the trap. We could determine that it was a reptile, and that it had legs.
It was all curled up inside the trap. After cutting the trap open, we discovered that it was a…
… a Race Horse Goanna. He was about 4 foot long and once free, headed for the bush.
Morale of the story:- Animals are not aware which specie the trap is set for!
One Response
Thanks for sending the blog address! Enjoyed the story!
Reminds me of when we lived in Hawaii on Hickam AFB in base housing. It was Christmas time and my next door neighbor called one morning to ask for my help – she had a rat running around her living room!
We chased it around the room and under her Christmas tree and finally trapped it behind the encyclopedias (back when we actually needed the physical books and not the Internet!) I put a bucket over the rat and we slid a piece of plywood underneath to trap the animal.
We called the base animal control and they said someone would be right over. We sat on the front porch with the rat in the bucket with plywood safely on top. The airman showed up in his combat fatigues – boots and all. My neighbor asked if she could have the bucket back after they were done – he said “No problem”. He took the bucket to the end of her walkway – about 10 feet from where we were sitting – picked the rat out of the bucket by the tail, placed the rat on the sidewalk and stomped on it with his boot!!!!!
He calmly picked the rat up and walked back to his truck, leaving the bucket on the sidewalk! Needless to say this was way before Hanta Virus and environmental controls! If this happened today you’d have a dude show up in a white contaiment suit!
I’ll try to keep in touch by reading your blog! Give my best to Candace.