Man Your Stations

We have been under siege lately.  We had a couple of raccoons break into our old chicken coop and kill our favorite chicken.  She has been producing for more than 4 years now and would crawl up into your lap to take a nap.  The Striblings do not like losing a favorite chicken.

Not being a family easily intimidated by varmints, we began building our defenses.  We set three traps, got the pellet gun sighted in to pinpoint accuracy, and shored up the coop.  Then, they broke in again the following night and killed another chicken.  They are wiley creatures, and curiously strong, but we were ready for the onslaught.

That night, I was awoken by a terrible squaking.  I ran outside in my skivvies at 4 am to find a dead chicken, a fleeing raccoon, a trapped raccoon, and a trap that had been outwitted. 

I don't get up at 4 am to catch one raccoon when I know his evil Ninja cohorts are on the loose.  I reset the trap with the dead chicken as bait, moved the remainder of that flock in with my younger flock in the newer coop, and went back to bed.

I came back downstairs at my appointed time to find the other raccoon trapped, a victim of his own curiosity.  HAHA!

I thought about taking them for a long ride and dropping them off to become someone else's problem.  The LW would have none of it.  "We take care of our own animal problems around here."  Too much Little House on the Prairie as a child if you ask me.  Don't ask her what happened to her pets when she was a wee lass and they got sick.   That's why we don't have a dog.  So, needless to say, we disposed of the vermin under the cloak of darkness, and have been resting peacefully since. 

Now, I realize that their little raccoon friends are gearing up for a full frontal assault.  We will be prepared.  We have bats, sticks, and helmets at the ready for hand-to-hand combat should it come to that.  I imagine it looking like a scene out of ancient England where the villagers (the peaceful Stribling Tribe) come out to fight off the invading barbarian hordes (the wiley Varmints) with pitchforks and shovels.  It will probably wind up looking more like a scene out of Monty Python than the Battle of Hastings, but we will be ready.

To quote Si Robertson, our favorite personality from Duck Dynasty, "(The raccoons) are like the Vietcong.  They only come out and night and they live in holes in the ground."