[AT] OT - Skunks

[David Rotigel]

Hi George, From what I remember herons taste pretty much like chicken-- 
GO FOR IT!
	Dave

On Mar 31, 2010, at 10:48 AM, Best, George wrote:

> We live out in the country will all sorts of critters living in the  
> woods and visiting our house on a frequent basis.
> We've had coons come around, especially when we used to set food  
> outside for the cats, plus an occasional attempt to get the fish in  
> our backyard pond.
>
> After one episode of a coon tearing up our fish pond, I got a live  
> trap, baited it and set it out by the pond.
>
> Next morning I look out the window and the trap is sprung!  When I  
> went out to see the coon I'd caught, my first thought was I'd caught  
> the stray black/white cat we occasionally see around our place.   
> Nope..... it was a skunk!
>
> I dispatched that skunk with the .22 and dumped the carcass out in  
> the woods.  Killed it quick enough that the cage didn't have much  
> smell to it so reset the trap the next night to try to catch the  
> coon again.
>
> Next morning the trap is sprung again!
>
> Damn.... got another skunk.  Unfortunately, this one didn't go down  
> as quickly as the first one and the cage was a bit smelly by the  
> time it died.
>
> Decided after the 2nd one to stop trying to catch the coon, besides  
> the trap probably wasn't going to attract anything except skunks for  
> awhile.
>
> One thing that did surprise me a bit is the first skunk carcass was  
> pretty well gone within 24 hrs, the second one disappeared just  
> about as quick.  Other than a little bit of fur and tip of the tails  
> something ate them up pretty quick.
>
> We've got a lot of coyotes around but don't know if they would eat  
> skunks or not.  We also have several great horned owls around our  
> place and I do know that they kill and eat skunks as they have no  
> sense of smell.  So it is possible that the owls cleaned them up.
>
> We still occasionally see a skunk, but haven't seen a coon in quite  
> awhile.  Of course since we no longer have any cats and there is no  
> more pet food around our place they may be frequenting the neighbor  
> places with better eating choices.
>
> As for the fish pond, a heron pretty well cleaned us out last 4th of  
> July.  We had some pretty nice size fish and all but two of them  
> were gotten.  Those last two were gotten the next time we left the  
> property.  Guess the heron was watching and waiting for us to leave  
> to finish cleaning out the pond.  We learned the first time we lost  
> all our koi fish to just buy feeder gold fish instead.  The 27 cent  
> feeder gold fish had gotten to be 6-9" long and were doing pretty  
> good until this last time.  A couple weeks after being cleaned out  
> in the fish department, my wife noticed some activity in the pond,   
> we had hundreds of baby feed gold fish. So we're back in the process  
> of growing food for another heron or coon.  Of course it will take a  
> few years before they get big enough to make a good meal.
>
>
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