The Conundrum of Carl & Betty

[reed]

In front of where we park the cars and in sight of the kitchen window is a large stack of firewood, enough to heat the house for two, maybe three years. Up off the ground and covered with a tarp it's warm and cozy inside. That's where they live, Carl & Betty, they have been there all winter dining on sunflower seeds from the bird feeders and pecans from the woman's stash on the side porch. The garden pond with its pump keeping it partially open even in the coldest weather provides a handy source of water. They've got everything they need and they are obviously happy. They often enjoy people watching in their leisure time, perching on the little concrete wall just outside the dining room window and gazing in as we eat our supper.  I knew a long time ago they had chewed a hole in the plastic pecan tub but I didn't tell the woman. Carl & Betty are the very definition of cute and they have eased the sadness just a little of having lost my dog Ethel to kidney failure last fall. 

Carl & Betty can't stay here. With their olfactory superpowers I have no doubt they will sniff out and eat all my corn when I plant it. Plus, assuming they are a heterosexual couple there will soon be little Johnny and Billy and Mary Jane and who knows who else, I'll have to get a second job to support their sunflower habit.  I like Carl & Betty, I don't want to hurt them but they really do have to go.  

They are easy to catch, a few kernels of sweet corn in a small trap and in a few minutes they are in it, they are actually used to it as I'v trapped them both a couple times to get a closer look at them, they don't even seem to be bothered by it. Many would say no problem, just trap them and take them over to the state's hunting land and turn them loose but I researched that and it isn't as "have a heart" as it implies.  They won't know where they are, they won't know where to get food and water or have safe place to go in a storm. Others might regard them as illegal aliens and be mean to them. They might try to come home but when your 5 inches long and two inches tall a couple miles is a very long way. It's awful, it's worse than killing. If I had lots of money I would take them to a vet and get them fixed and build them a little house where they could live out their days safe from snakes and hawks. 

So there it is I reckon, let Carl & Betty and their offspring have their run of the place or kill them and accept the karmic consequences. 
 

[mskrieger]

Oh man, sorry to hear that, reed. I know you plant a lot of corn but is it possible to put mesh over it, something that can block their digging? or maybe fence it in and put a mean ol' cat in there (the fence is for containing the cat, the cat is to ward off Carl&Betty)?

[steev]

I get your dilemma. I have no animus toward bunnies and ground squirrels, but I shoot any that get into my veggie corral; my sweetheart thinks that's beastly. Get a hired gun (cat or dog).

[reed]

I like cats, have thought about getting one or more but they would have to live outside and I worry about them killing my birds. I also worry that although I want them to live outside I might feel bad about that on very cold nights or the like, reckon I could build them a sung little cat house in the shed or something.

Dogs on the other hand... I love dogs. I've had two of them over the last thirty years so I reckon they last about fifteen but I've never "got" a dog as in thinking I'm gonna go get one, just not how it's worked. The last two were without a doubt and not subject to argument the best dogs the world has ever known.

Wilbur was one of 14 in a litter a friend of mine had, part American Bulldog and part big yellow neighborhood dog. My friend had the mother bred to another American Bulldog but four of the puppies didn't look quite right. They looked more like Saint Bernard without the slobber. Wilbur was the biggest of the bunch. One day after sitting under an apple tree drinking beer with that puppy under my chair I got up to leave and my friend said take that thing home with you or I'm gonna shoot it, I didn’t want a dog, I still lived in town then but I knew he really would shoot it and I was drunk, so I did.

On the way home I told him if he pooped in the house I'd give him away. When I realized how big he was gonna get I told him if he ever got mean I'd shoot him. He never did either one of those things. We called him God’s own dog; he loved everybody and everything, well except for possums, not at all fond of possums. The old farm vet that did five cancer surgeries, almost for free, cried as much as everybody else when I had to take him to put him down. I buried him in a freezing rain, in the dark, by light from the truck’s high beams and I had no intention of getting another dog, maybe ever.

About six months later the woman looked out the window and said “that’s a funny looking squirrel” so we out and it wasn’t a squirrel at all. It was this little mostly black puppy and it was terrified. It screamed when I tried to pick it up and flailed around with all its tiny little sharp things but I managed to get it and bring it up to the porch. Gave it a little water and some scrambled eggs and then it ran across the road and went under the neighbors old abandoned shed. It lived there for a couple weeks and would come out to eat but didn’t like being touched, I figured it would eventually disappear; a coyote would get it or something and since I didn’t want it anyway I didn’t really care but I did get used to seeing it there when I came home and I always had a little something for it to eat.

Then I came home one day and it was gone, I was a little disappointed not to see it peeking out from under the shed but kind of glad too but when I came up to the front porch there it was, and it was tame. Like it just decided I think I’ll live here. It was still shy about being touched but I made it a little bed, just for the night. It was way too tiny to have easily found its way down a mile long dead end road and I though surely it belongs to a neighbor so I took it the next day to all of them and nobody owned it and nobody wanted it. I didn’t want it either; I tried and tried to give it away. It was so spastic and crazy and all its sharp things were so sharp. I finally decided I would take it to the pound but on the way I realized if I didn’t love it nobody would so I called her Ethel and brought her home. Ethel was certainly no Wilbur but she was undeniably cute and very loving; when she was in the mood.

The mood was up to her though; she did nothing other than by her own intention. I found out later it was because she was an English Sheppard or American Farm dog, very high energy and smarter than the average human teenager, much smarter. I didn’t know anything about training a super smart herding dog and I never tried, I didn’t know I was supposed to, for two years we argued about everything and she usually won. She was her own little being with her own little mind and her own little soul and that is all there was to it. I’d never met a dog like her. I didn’t train her and she didn’t train me, we just came to an understanding as much on her terms as mine. I stopped being mad at her for being a dog that wasn't Wilbur and pretty soon I stopped comparing her to Wilbur.

Eventually nothing happened in the yard or garden without her close supervision. When we went for hikes if I walked a mile she ran ten. She could leap those big round hay bales in a single bound. She was faster than rabbits and better at the zig zag than they are, she anticipated their movement and they were her favorite snack, they had no chance. She herded chickens and climbed trees. She was afraid of cats, possums, coons and thunder. She came and told me if a car turned off the black top onto our gravel road and whether she knew who it was or not, often I also knew by her actions, who it was. She wouldn’t allow being touched by a stranger unless I said it was ok. We communicated with eye movements and facial expressions. If I glanced at her while thinking "chickens" and then glanced around the empty yard she would jump up and go get the chickens, it freaked people out, it freaked me out a little too. She lived her little life free, never on a chain, never in a cage.

On her last day they had her so drugged up she barely knew who we were but when I used the “I mean it” tone she came over and licked the woman’s knees and wagged her tail a little like she always did then she climbed on my lap, laid her little head down and died. We buried her in one of the woman’s flower gardens on a very hot afternoon.

I hadn’t seen Carl & Betty before that, if I had I would have trapped and removed them as I always did before but instead I saw them after that and gave them names, I just wasn’t in the mood to kill something, still not. Never the less, Carl & Betty have to go, so I’ll figure it out and get over it and maybe someday I’ll have another dog too and maybe a cat.

[flowerbug]

chipmunks are legion around here... we encourage snakes and the semi-feral kitties. i also have an air gun and we put out bucket traps if they seem to be getting out of hand again. one year i trapped over 50 in a few weeks. it's been quieter since then.

i'm removing a lot of chipmunk (and other creature habitat) this year by redoing the mess we've had for many years. a bunch of rotting pallets that were over a drainage ditch. all sorts of animals used that as hiding space if i'd come out with the air gun. no more hidey holes for them. we still will have tons of chipmunk habitat after i get this project done but they're going to have to cover a lot of open ground with a clear firing line to get to the gardens.

sorry little creatures. i don't mind a few around here or there (they eat the helicopters from the maple tree out of the limestone mulch), but they also eat a lot of my strawberries (cue that Movie about some sailors stealing the captain's strawberries)... in the general permaculture attitude i do not mind sharing some of my crop with them. it's just that i don't want them to have it all!

the groundhogs, rabbits, deer, possums, skunks, raccoons, birds, etc. all are welcome here as long as they respect the fences i put up. deer trying to run through fences can make a mess of things. i had to get taller poles and now i have to redo some fence this coming year. live and learn...

chipmunk fence would need to be taller than they can jump with a hot wire at the top so they can't get over. a fine enough mesh would be about half inch or less. i thought about doing that for growing edamame soybeans because otherwise i don't have a chance of them surviving. the chipmunks eat the sprouts before they even get the first few leaves on them... i'm not really that willing to do that severe of a fence and expense project for just one crop so i've given up on growing those for now. so many other things i can grow instead.

[steev]

Having every critter from voles to elk OTF, my dream is a 7' fence around at least 10 acres; were it not for my selfish desire to profit from my gardening, I'd be happy not to impede the critters, enjoying the open-air "zoo", being a zoologist by training; intending to eventually have poultry, I don't want the raccoons, bobcats, coyotes, boar, or pumas to take them; guess I'll put up with the raptors.

[prairiegardens]

ground squirrels or gophers.. sigh.. deer so far not a major issue. Seems as though Juicy Fruit gum does do the ground squirrels in, I prefer not to think about the process but if they would stay out of the greenhouse they would (for the moment) be safe. They haven't bothered my tomatoes but they are digging tunnels and holes beneath the greenhouse.
I don't mind sharing, but when they go through a potato patch nibbling a little bit on each and every potato that's pushing a bit too hard. A few years back they killed all my chestnut and butternut seedlings and this fall they found the strawberries in a bed I raised a foot above ground.
I've been practicing doing manifestations of a badger moving in but so far it hasn't had any results.