Oooh Oooh Havahart

We have a lot of nocturnal visitors in our yard and it is becoming a problem. Our little Yukon (did I say little?) has been in several fights with other animals, one of which left him bruised and bloodied, so we're on a mission to clean our yard of "friends". It has been an adventure. When Yukie first started going outside (mind you, I do not like that he goes outdoors but he was raised that way and I can't change his lifestyle after 12 years. Plus he pees on the doors if we don't let him out and frankly this is a better option) we caught a raccoon and a possum and Mircea let them loose at his work (which has a huge forest adjacent to it). No big deal. Lately we've had a string of great catches.

On New Year's Day we caught a sweet little raccoon. He was drawn to the root vegetables left over from some soup we had made, and when we drove him off to the beach to let him go, he seemed to want to stay with us forever. The next day we caught another possum, and this gigantor could barely turn around in the cage. When we took him to get dropped off, he waddled off, his fat "butt cheeks" swinging back and forth. We didn't catch anything for the next few days (despite a trap full of burned taquitos) but a couple days later I woke up to the sound of someone screaming "help". I jolted out of bed and realized that it wasn't a person...it could only be a peacock with a yelp like that. With my bleary eyes I peered out to the Havahart cage and saw this sweet, puffy little black and white cat. I figured she wasn't making the noise, so I walked out to release her from the cage (they get released back into the yard and we assume they'll be too scared to return.) and I heard the loudest, most shrillest sound ever. The peacock was this cat! I have never heard a noise so earth shattering since I last put SoftPaws on Little Fernie. I'm trying to release the cage and she is just screaming into my ear. The poor little thing was so scared (but full of taquitos) and she just raced off into the woods. On Tuesday night after a roving internet game of Guitar Hero with Marc, I found another cat in the cage. This little guy had eaten some old bologna (none of this is rotten) and he was pretty agitated too. He seemed to want to come inside with me, but with three other cats I just couldn't risk it.

This morning I was awakened from a dream about Peyton Manning (we were making chili for his brother's football game this weekend) with this terrible scratching sound. In the dream it was the crockpot malfunctioning, but in real life it was a rabid animal freaking out in the cage. Apparently it really liked the celery and additional root vegetables that we'd left out there. Mircea dropped that off at work this morning, but he said it wasn't without a fight. Interesting.

I tell this long, drawn out story because I also caught something else in the Havahart. Something I hadn't expected and something that really didn't want to be caught.

My poor Yukon was probably locked in that cage for about an hour. I'd let him out because I was vacuuming and he was begging at the door. I was taking some recycling outside and I looked for him in his usual spot and he wasn' t there. And then I heard it. The cries of a my little baby. Apparently he's lost the taste for cat food and had a hankerin' for some bologna and carrots, and had himself caught in the cage. I had to take some pictures (and a little movie with my high pitched voice) of him before I released him. My poor, poor little baby. He's such a little piggie that I'm sure he couldn't resist the additional vittles. I brought him inside and he cuddled up with me all day and slept in front of the fire all night. Silly boy!