Live Trap

Last Thursday my bro-in-law D and I visited the bar where my drummer and his other band were playing their funky metal really, really loud. I wore ear plugs, and was mightily impressed with both their effectiveness as well as the instrumentalistism of the band.

I didn’t get home until crazy late, like 10:30, and the Pepsi I’d ordered up from the bartender was waning but still keeping me on my toes. As I unlocked the doors and opened up the house to let in some fresh air, down on the road a car stopped. I could tell someone was walking around, and I heard a voice say, “I got it,” before the car drove on.

I get really nervous about things like that. Was somebody prowling around? I wondered. I hadn’t heard the person get back in the car, so I ran upstairs for the big and heavy flashlight I bought with last year’s birthday money.

I stood on the porch and shined my light around but didn’t see anyone or anything else down at the road. Then, what I felt was the same vehicle drove by again, the other way, and I watched from behind one of our pretentious pillars for suspicious activity, but of course it was dark, so nothing stood out.

That didn’t mean I wasn’t still on edge, though. I ate a bedtime snack on the porch and kept my flashlight handy before I headed to bed, my jumpy spirits calming only slightly, largely due to the reassuring presence of the driveway gate I put up last summer.

But the next morning I discovered that I’d forgotten to shut the gate after coming home (so much for that barrier to invasion). I also discovered what my flashlight hadn’t made obvious: the live trap in which four groundhogs, a possum, and a skunk had met their ends and which I hadn’t set for several weeks but had left in place down by the groundhog hole on this side of the stream bed which is on the house side of a sturdy pasture fence was very much gone.

It must have been a premeditated act of theft, as the trap was only visible from the road in the daylight. Those buggers had seen it and come back for it.

I was a bit nervous, going away for the weekend. Our corn was about ready to pick, and our house certainly isn’t burglar proof, and my tools are just out in the shed out back.

Thankfully, though, nothing else (that I remember having had) was gone when we returned. And I came back with some tremendous suggestions for dealing with the hooligans, including this one: put another live trap as bait into a really, really big live trap.

Hmmm.

Anyway, the corn survived, and today we processed and froze 235 ears. Whew!

I actually enjoyed the ordeal a bit, after getting over my frustration at the looming fact of being trapped in a cycle of harvesting and storing food–what a wonderful problem to have–but not getting to do other projects.

That’s a good live trap.