New House Blog: Episode XCVIII - TRAPPED!!

Preface: This Episode would have been posted a few weeks ago, but one of the hard drives on my computer started to fail (the hard drive that contains, among other things, the pictures used for the New House Blog), and I had to spend my blogging time replacing said hard drive and copying over all of the data from old drive to new.  In the process I discovered that it is actually possible to leave Fry's Electronics with only the single item you went there to buy.

We love animals, and we think that most of them have an appropriate place in the greater ecosystems of the world, but we feel that our yard is not the appropriate place for most of the animals in and around our particular local ecosystem.  One such animal type is the opossum, hereafter referred to as the possum, because it's fewer letters to type (and we often pronounce it that way anyway).

TRAPPED!! Part One

It started out as a normal workday, a Tuesday if I recall correctly.  I was minding my own business, preparing for my workday in my kitchen, when I noticed an animal moving among the tall grass out by our fruit trees (hereafter such area shall be known as the Orchard).  Feral cats are not uncommon around these parts, so my thought was that it was a large cat, and that I would rush at it and scare it away.  So I ran toward it on our brick pathway, and I jumped toward it, to scare it even more, but the scene upon which I arrived was not merely a cat wandering among the tall grasses.  It was, in reality, a pair of possums involved in, shall we say, creating little baby possums.  Right there in our back yard!  They did not act scared at my approach, and they did not play dead.  One of them looked at me and gave me the evil eye (the male, I think), and I could tell that they were not going to be leaving the area for a little while.  I considered shooting them with my BB gun to scare them away, but I decided, and Becky heartily concurred, that it would be best to call in the professional animal trappers to deal with these pesky possums.

I called the trappers, and they came out on Thursday to set up two traps in the area of the possums' recent activity.

Trap #1.  The trapper showed us how to operate the door mechanism, should we have to release a mistakenly-trapped cat or squirrel.

Trap #2.

The waiting game began.  We kept vigilant watch on both of the traps, and I set up our critter cam to record any unauthorized animal activity in the area.

Nothing happened the first night, but sometime during the next day Becky noticed that trap #1 had been tripped.

No, this is not a possum - just a pesky slimy squirrel.  The little guy had to wait there all day until I got home from work to release him, and then he hightailed it out of the area.















TRAPPED!!  Part Two

We now move on to another type of trap - the infamous bathroom sink trap: said trap in this case belonging to the Parents' House bathroom sink.  You may recall from this Episode that I had previously replaced two bathroom sinks and three bathroom faucets at the Parents' House.  At that time the third bathroom sink did not seem to be in need of replacement, but in the months since then it deteriorated to the point of needing replacement, which meant that the trap below the sink would need replacing.

The sink.  It doesn't look too bad in this photo, but in-person, and underneath, it looked much worse.

And the trap.  It looks to be in good shape, but because of the way black ABS pipe is glued together, a new trap was required.

Look at that healthy rust ring around the sink hole.

With said rust ring cleaned up.

The new sink is in place and caulked.  It is all ceramic, and is much less likely to rust up.

To reduce my intake of noxious fumes I glued up some of the new ABS drain parts outside in the fresh air.

The new drain assembly installed.  I did have to glue up one joint inside, but I took care to minimize the noxious fumes.  Note the new trap.

This is the new sink with faucet installed and everything connected and in working order.  So far I have received no word that anything is leaking.







TRAPPED!! Part Three

After I released the slimy squirrel the trap sat vacant for the rest of the day and part of the night.  But lo!  What hath the critter cam caught?

If you look closely you can see two gleaming eyes staring out of the trap (I have highlighted the edges of the trap for more clarity).  Note the timestamp of the image.

Success!!  We caught a possum!  Nasty looking critter, isn't it?  He was none to happy to be there, but he did not try to escape, and we did not let him out.  Instead, we called the trapper and he came and retrieved the trap-and-possum, and he placed a fresh trap in its place.

TRAPPED!!  Part Four

We have learned from a TV commercial that we should inspect our washer hoses every five years, and it's been nearly six years since we installed washer hoses in our Internally-plumbed House, so the time seemed ripe for hose inspection.

Here is the debris that was trapped in the hot-water filter.  The hose itself was/is in fine order.

As you can see, the cold water inlet had trapped a bit more, and larger, debris.  This is not surprising, as we use the cold water more than the hot.  The cold water hose was/is in fine order.

We removed the filters, cleaned them, and replaced them.  Here you can see one of the cleaned filters.









TRAPPED!!  Part Five

After the excitement of the possum trapping there was no further trap activity for the rest of that day and the next day.  But then, some time during the night...

Woohoo!!  A second possum!  Score one for trap #2!  We believe that these are the same two possums who were so bold less than a week previous to their capture.

This one wasn't happy, either, and she showed some teeth as I approached.  As with the first possum, we called the trapper for retrieval and fresh trap placement.  After a couple of days of not trapping any more critters, both traps were retrieved.

TRAPPED!!  Part Six

Of course, some of the bait food had slipped through the bars of the floor of the traps, and we thought we had successfully disposed of said bait food, but our camera trap seemed to say otherwise.

It may not be very clear from this single frame of video, but you are looking at a raccoon in the tall grass.  He is apparently investigating right where the bait food was.

As you can see, the raccoon was not the only interested visitor.  This frame shows a stray cat among the cactus.  We have seen this cat before, but not the raccoon.

And look who I discovered on the fence not long after all of this trapping took place.  This, friends, is a larger, more mature possum, and it has darker coloring than the two we caught in our yard.  I discovered this creature on night as I went out to water the trees in the Orchard.  By the time I retrieved my BB gun from the house it had moved on.

So far, we have not detected any additional footage of varmints in our yard, but we have discovered that our back fence seems to be somewhat of a thoroughfare at night.

The large possum seems to be a regular customer.

Look who else we trapped.  I believe this is the same cat as we saw above.

As long as the various varmints stay out of our yard we probably will let them mostly alone.

TRAPPED!!  Part Seven

In addition to capturing a raccoon on camera, we saw a raccoon live, in-person.  It was Edgar pointed him out to us.  Becky and some of the cats were upstairs one night, and Edgar was motioning toward the open sliding glass door, seemingly indicating that he smelled another critter outside.  Becky went out on the balcony to investigate, and she saw the raccoon on the fence.  She called for me, and I, too saw him.  He seemed to be just chilling out, not doing anything in particular.  I retrieved my trusty BB gun and shortly after I returned to the balcony he made his escape.  I don't recall the exact timing of this incident, but it was after the possum traps had been retrieved, and before we viewed the video of the raccoon (see above).

Again we called the trappers, and again someone came out and set a trap in the area where we had seen the raccoon.

This is the trap as seen from our balcony.  Also seen is the fence area where we spotted the raccoon. Sadly, this trap was totally unsuccessful.  After a week of no activity we had the trap retrieved, and there has been no sign of the raccoon since

In addition to the trap, we set up a second critter cam to monitor this part of the yard for critters.  It did not capture any useful video of any critters.

TRAPPED!!  Part Eight

We leave you with this teaser for a planned future project.  What is it?  What do those numbers and symbols mean?  Why was it drawn in black ink?  What is that scrap of wood covering?  Why was it drawn with two different types of ink?  Is that an awesome workbench it's sitting on, or what?

Take your best
    bIsh