We had a bit of a problem down at the ranch and ended up capturing a dangerous individual. You see, as I've mentioned before, my wife is chicken nuts and is raising everything chicken left and right. Sometimes I think we have about 50,000 of the things with eggs coming out every oriface. Anyway, one of the places we keep them is in a coop protected by wire a short distance from the house and the barn. We have had a lot of chicks hatch out of my wife's super incubator and we have also purchased some particular colors of chicks in particular breeds that she wants to raise. Many of these chicks were moved out to the coop when they reached a certain size. Something started coming into the coop and getting the chicks. We though it was rats, as we had a rat problem at one time and slowed or stopped it with these green blocks of rat death.
The dogs started barking though, alerting my wife late one night, and she trotted out to the coop to confront a skunk. She escaped spraying, but the skunk and her went about 3 rounds that night and the skunk killed 4 chicks. Two chicks were mutts, but 2 were her prized blue cochans. This meant war, and we instituted several security measures.
First she reinforced the edge of the pen with layers of dirt and rock on the inside to make it harder to dig under. Mounds of dirt went outside the building also. Next, she instituted several nightly checks including me with flashlight and .45 caliber skunk eliminator. We also started lock down. When the chickens perched for the night we locked them into the building. During the implementation phase of this project we lost two more chicks and my wife did encounter skunk 1 more time. I encounter the after smell of skunk twice. We also placed a live trap and baited it with several different things. We did eventually encounter a rather nasty opossum which did not survive the encounter, I am sorry to say. However Skunk seems to have vanished without a trace. No chickens have been lost mysteriously for about 2 weeks.
While doing a routine chicken check Saturday, though, my wife started acting funny and calling for me to bring the net. We keep a couple of cheap (relative to others types) fishing nets around to help snag escaped birds. I picked up the nearest net and took it too here all the while getting these "be very quiet" hand motions. I figured a chicken escaped into the tall grass she was looking at, however when I got there she pointed to a pointy masked face in the grass. She then proceeded to bag a baby racoon. We stuck her in a cage and left her there for a few hours waiting for mom, but she never showed, so we tried to feed and water her. She ended up in the house in a plastic dog kennel. Interestingly enough, I know it is illegal in our state to keep a wild animal for a pet, so we tried to find a licensed wildlife rehabilitator to take care of her. That's when we discovered that apparently Tennessee no longer includes racoons on the list of animals that can be rehabilitated and released into the wild. It has something to do with fear of rabies.
This seems weird since a rehabilitated animal would be vacinated and less likely to spread rabies for at least the first year of release to the wild. We did finally track down an organization that found a legal loophole and is able to somehow use the animal for educational purposes until it is old enough to release, so as of last night she is doing well. The poor little thing wasn't even weaned yet and didn't really know how to lap up water or milk replacement formula.
