I am certain you’ve all determined I am a bit nutty. Just so you know, I have no problem with that classification. And keep such labels in mind as you read about our latest little backyard adventure. Further, remember that sanity is nowhere near as interesting as its alternative.
First off, I feel as if I’m existing in what I call “baby time.” This is my own take on how my mom described those first few months at home with a new baby: the hours are long, but the days fly by. Now, knowing my dear daughter-in-law just had a baby, I don’t want to minimize the changes and stress that accompany such a blessing. But as the minutes of bickering little girls stretch into hours, and as I find myself practically hoarse from yelling by 2 p.m. about three days out of five, I do see a resemblance between new-baby-at-home and summer vacation tedium, coupled with the complete shock that we’re nearly into July already.
Site of the Action: The abc Family Backyard
Luckily, to break up monotony of supper complaints, the undone chores (really, HOW HARD is it to pick up your own shoes??????????), and Barbie/Polly possession issues, we’ve got wildlife with which to distract and amuse ourselves.
You may have read yesterday that we finally caught a groundhog in our live trap. While I was good for a few days about gazing out to the back of the yard and checking the trap status, I confess I had not paid too much attention to the trap past the weekend. I hadn’t exactly given up, but after I realized the chipmunks were stealing the bait, my hopes of catching the Big One had diminished.
So, last evening, the girls are running around in the backyard with the neighbor kids, and I am getting things ready for supper. Hubby comes home, and like a homing pigeon to its destination, barely breaks stride as he tosses his backpack on the couch and walks briskly to the patio door window to check the trap. Mind you, I’m deciding what vegetable will cause the least amount of resistance at the supper table, and pulling out seasonings for burgers, and wondering which method I should use to thaw bakery buns in 20 minutes, so I’m only half-conscious of hubby’s movements. Next thing I know, he’s looking at me with a slightly baffled expression, asking me how long we’ve had something in the trap.
I know you are dying to know how I felt upon hearing such an exciting announcement. Let me tell you: I was fiercely enthusiastic. I believed I “whooped” a little on the deck, I was so excited. In retrospect, I should probably reserve such behavior for straight-A report cards and visits to the spa, but I wasn’t really thinking at this point.
Gus the Groundhog, Right before Release
So we all trek to the back of our yard to examine our catch. And my enthusiasm went from a score of a perfect 10 to -7 in about five seconds. While, yes, the trap held captive a woodchuck, the critter was only about a third the size of the one I am after. As ridiculous as it sounds, I did not want to believe there were families of varmints involved. I was clinging to the irrational thought that we had one, gigantic, ~12 pound gluttonous groundhog, and that when we trapped him, the Groundhog Saga would be simply another chapter closed in our surviving-suburbia story.
Yeah, right.
Now, the girls and I had planned to go to a library program after supper (more on that in tomorrow’s post), but there was NO WAY I was missing the transfer and release of this invader. Claire’s crocodile tears led hubby to suggest that we take Gus the Groundhog to his new neighborhood AFTER the library program. While in my adult and parental mind I should have been embracing the compromise, all I wanted to do was revert to a 10-year-old’s tactics and whine and stomp until we took care of Gus right then. Luckily, in the interest of family harmony, the medication I take is strong enough that I am usually able to control such impulses.
Official Tools of Release
Fast-forward through the library adventure. The girls and I return home, where hubby is in the driveway, waiting for the Groundhog Caravan with the live trap and its contents in a box. And a snow shovel. I guess he remembered my weapon of choice when I had to deal with the possum, but really…. A SNOW SHOVEL??? (Let’s remember that I grabbed it in the panic of the moment! Hubby was home waiting for us for over an hour!)
Well, if I told you where we drove I may have to fatally harm you, so we’ll gloss right over our destination. Oh, did I mention that Kate was petrified at the prospect of having the critter sitting behind her in the backseat? And my empathetic Claire, using her powers purely for her own entertainment, put on her acting hat and started theorizing, in frightened tones, what would happen if the groundhog got loose in the van while we were driving. Oh, dear, who would it would bite first, how loud should she (Claire) scream, would I make it to the hospital ER or need to call an ambulance, etc. etc. etc. I’m pretty sure that kind of taunting translates into a few years of psychiatric therapy for Kate, but that’s an expense I’m really trying to pretend doesn’t exist.
While I’d love to tell you that some great uproar occurred when we, ummmm, introduced Gus to his new habitat, I have to confess it went pretty smoothly. The trap door stuck a little. After hubby wedged that open, I had to hold the trap vertically (yes, that is perpendicular to the ground) to try to get the freaked out Gus out of his jail. Boy, those buggers really have some strong digits. He was hanging on for what I’m sure he thought was his dear life. But finally, he decided to resign himself to this life-changing moment, retracted his amazingly long and sharp poop-brown claws, and plopped out of his prison. He rivaled lightning in the speed with which he dove into the foliage; I didn’t know a stout animal could move that fast.
Live Trap Reset and Ready for Business
One might think that now that we’ve caught one, that we should call off this experiment. Well, whoever thinks that must not have been reading this blog for too long, because anyone who’s actually known me for more than 3 minutes would realize that now I am obsessed with capturing the Big One. Yes, upon arriving back home, hubby cleaned out the cage (every living thing with bowels seems to excrete when scared) and I prepared more bait.
Check back often to see what happens next – and say a little prayer that our next captive isn’t the skunk that we’ve been smelling recently.
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