Two nights ago at bedtime I was turning out the back porch light and happened to glance outside and spotted a huge possum eating the cat food. I grabbed the .22 pistol by the back door and stepped outside, the possum was gone. I had forgotten to grab a flashlight so only had the porch light to see out into the dark. Today, I cleaned off the laundry room shelves but moved the pistol so it would still be handy and put a large flashlight next to the predator killer.
Tonight Zeke wanted to go outside and run around before bedtime. Sometimes I let him go out for 30 minutes and terrorize the cats and anything that moves in our yard. Annmarie and I were in the kitchen and we heard him raising a ruckus and barking nonstop outside the kitchen window. He is not a barker, almost never barks. So I grab the pistol and large flashlight and go out the back door. Zeke is running around the base of the maple tree barking up at something, a raccoon! He had treed a raccoon. I went over to the base of the tree and brought out the pistol, as soon as Zeke saw the pistol he took off for the front bushes. He does not like guns, if he could vote, it would be for gun control. Big scaredy cat, will tear into cow with large horns but don't let him see a gun. Once the dog disappeared the raccoon started down the tree not scared of me a bit at the base. I shot it once in the head on its way down, no more chicken killer. Sometimes it seems harsh to someone not living out here, but we don't go out of our way to harass the wildlife we just enforce the .22 rule around our house. The predators cannot eat the chickens, cat food or cats. Those animals all serve a purpose on the farm and cannot be spared. Now I just need to get that possum. The amazing thing is now that I have a working automatic chicken door I actually have to cull my own birds and get eggs year round. At the beginning of the year I was only gettting one egg a day. It was awful. So we will continue to enforce our boundaries.
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