We are in the middle of summer on our little acreage and the battle against nature is in full force. Unless you experience what nature can throw at you you’ll never fully understand what botanist go through attempting to bring plants to maturity. In other words gardening can be a frustrating job.

I am reminded of the constant intrusion of nature every morning as I look out our living room window and watch the ‘big bully’ blue jays chase away all the other birds feeding at the bird feeder. Then they settle in and pig out on the sunflowers seeds spilling half of them on the ground as they eat.

Of course the squirrels think that is grand as they scurry in and gobble up the dislodged seeds.

Deer love to eat soybeans and I’ve seen fields near our house where rows of the plants have been devoured. I continue to do battle with them myself as those big eared pests love to devour pumpkins, potato plants, pea plants and beets. I’m finally winning the battle after erecting six foot chicken wire fences around two of the gardens and an electric fence around a third one. The electric fence keeps reminding me of it’s presence because I’ve backed into it several times this summer. Each time I received a jolt that jump started my heart even though there was no need for a jump start! 🙂

There is some good news to report however. The cucumber beetles that can be devastating to pumpkin plants did not make their usual appearance this spring. Hopefully old man winter turned their little hibernating pupas into frozen ice cubes which caused their demise.

The animal pest winning “Summer Pest of the Year Award” so far has been the cutest little critter that is named the Richardson Ground Squirrel. Most people probably just call them a gopher but we biologist know they are technically a ground squirrel.

I have no visual evidence however I suspect they are responsible for devouring our pea seeds before they were able to germinate. Also they gobbled up most of the string bean plants and mowed down the few carrot plants that poked their heads above the soil. Also several hills of pumpkins had nothing emerge from them and I suspect the ground squirrels had lunch on the seeds before they could sprout. 🙁

So animal lovers you are not going to like this next part of my blog. If you are a serious animal lover I’d suggest you go to Facebook and begin reading some of the political posts. They will be less painful. 🙁

The plant destruction was getting serious and to make it all worse the parent ground squirrels were busy rearing their young and in a few more weeks the gardens would be crawling with teenage ground squirrels. (and maybe even a few in diapers!):)

Something had to be done. If you have read some of my earlier blogs you may recall that I spent last winter fattening up Fuzzball a starving tomcat that wandered on to our property. Well that ended on a sad note this spring when a rejuvenated Fuzzball left the security of our home and decided to go courting the neighborhood’s female cats.

He never returned. In fact a school bus driver that drives past our house twice daily reported seeing a cat matching Fuzzball’s description flattened on the highway a mile from our house. He was at peace and in pieces! 🙁  I was saddened because I had grown to like Fuzzball even though my right hand still contains many scars inflicted by the feline.

Well there was just a glimmer of good news in such a tragedy. It seems Fuzzball had left before finishing the bag of cat food that I was feeding him.

Now animal lovers if you haven’t stopped reading yet this would definitely be the time to delete this blog and maybe watch the Twins play baseball. I’ve warned you!

I got thinking about that half a bag of cat food. I wonder if ground squirrels would be tempted by cat food since they seem to eat everything else? The more I thought about it the more I became convinced it would be worth a try. So I got a live trap and placed it in the garden where most of the damage was occurring.

That idea failed miserably. The cat food disappeared but the trap never closed. The ground squirrel was so light it didn’t trigger the pan that would cause the live trap door to close.

So now I was forced to go to plan B. I didn’t want to but there was no other choice if I wanted to lower the ground squirrel population and save our garden’s bounty. I went into the shed and pulled down the #2 mink traps.

I set the traps and sprinkled cat food on the trap and under the pan. I will not go into a detailed description of the results other then to say I lowered the ground squirrel population by three.

Then I made the big mistake. Kathie and I went away for a three day weekend and I left one of the mink traps baited and set. When we returned I decided to take a walk to the gardens and see how the crops were faring.

The crops looked wonderful and had grown greatly as we had received very timely rain showers. In fact while we were gone the gardens had received over an inch of rain.

I was preparing to return to the house when I thought about the baited mink trap. Actually I had walked right by it earlier and hadn’t noticed it. As I closed the garden gate I looked back where the trap was set and I noticed a black lump on the ground and the trap was sprung.

Then I gulped because I also noticed a thin white stripe running along the side of the black lump. Then I saw the two beady eyes staring at me. It was a skunk! Just minutes before I had walked not more then five feet from him!

Pet cats are one thing but I was not in a mood to add a pet skunk to that list. A certain foul odor would probably have made that an impossible task anyway. So I did what I had to do. I got my trusty 22 rifle and sent Mr. Skunk to a better place.

As I shot I saw the droplets of liquid fly and knew what that was composed of. Quickly I grabbed a shovel and covered the expired skunk with garden dirt and the foul odor of the skunk disappeared.

The unlucky skunk lies beneath a pile of garden soil right next to the onion patch. Hopefully next fall the onions won’t have a strange odor to them. 🙁

The war against the wildlife has quieted down. I’m not sure how much damage I did to the ground squirrel population. We’ll find out this fall when the pumpkins begin to ripen because the ground squirrels like to chew and deface those beautiful orange orbs.

Hopefully the Humane Society won’t read this blog and drag me into court. If they do I’ll just plead the 5th. Or better yet, I’ll plead guilty and bring the trap with the skunk still attached into the court room. The should clear things up or at least clear the courtroom! 🙂

Until next time.