Raccoons and possums

You know you're living on a homestead when you go home for lunch and have to change before returning to work because a possum bled on you.

A raccoon has killed three of our chickens. Ripped the heads right off and then left the bodies relatively uneaten. Raccoons, we have learned, kill for sport.

I bought a larger trap, this one with two doors. Pictures to come. I set the old trap on one side of the barn and the new one with the chickens and baited them with stale bread and catfood.

The first day we caught a chicken. I went down in the morning and noticed it was sprung and got excited... especially when I saw what we caught was huge and striped.

But it was just a black and white chicken, standing rather dumbly waiting to be freed. It of course had seized the opportunity to eat all the bait while it was waiting for me to find it.

The second day I caught a possum. Neighbor Bill shot the possum for me, and while disposing it of I got blood on my pants... big clots of blood. It was pretty disgusting.

The good news is that the chickens are laying like crazy! We had 5 eggs yesterday!