Great stories guys.
@Ruffseas Where abouts are you on the coast? I'm really hoping to make it over to Forks at the end of the month for some salmon fishing. I love fishing the rivers there. I usually go here:
https://www.threeriversresortandguideservice.com/ I've heard the chattering and cooing sounds raccoons make too. They have quite a vocabulary and are very intelligent animals. Smarter than a lot of people I've met. I don't have any birds now so my war with them has ended. Aside from playing the game of hide the cat food. I've heard that they like corn and can really devastate it too. But thankfully the ones here have never discovered mine yet. Once they learn something they seem to pass that knowledge on to generation after generation. There is a big fir tree about 30 yards behind my house that is the pooping tree. There is always a small mountain of raccoon poop there every year. I guess it has been designated the local raccoon outhouse or they use it to mark who has been around lately. ??
There are no possums here. I've seen them and man are they fugly. I'd have to be near starving to eat one. We have pack rats in the forests but no norway rats. If I ever saw one it would be total war on those beasts. Probably the only thing I would consider using poison on. No foxes here either. They seem to be everywhere in north america except the inland northwest. Too much competition from coyotes I guess. And we have wolves again now after nearly 100 years of extinction. Very controversial subject here. Cattle men and Elk hunters hate them but I figure they have a right to live too like everything else. And they have a roll to play in nature.
We were heading to town one hot summer day a few years ago and smelled Skunk. About 20 feet in front of the truck under a Maple tree was a dead baby skunk with flies buzzing around. It looked to be about 8 weeks old. When we got home I grabbed a shovel to go bury it. I Iooked it over to see what might have killed it but didn't see any thing. I wasn't going to touch it because they also sometimes carry rabies. I went to scoop it onto the shovel when suddenly it moved and tried to raise its head up but fell back down. I thought, damn its still alive and went in and got the 22. For some reason I just couldn't shoot it. Dunno why. After a bit I went back out to do what I had to do and put the poor thing out of its misery. Then it managed to raise its head and tried to crawl off but didn't get far. We felt really sorry for it and got up our nerve and tied to help it. My wife got a turkey baster filled with water and I stuck it in the corner of its mouth and gave it some water. It could hardly move but still managed to gulp it down. So she went in and got some milk and it really gulped that down. After a couple hours it got up and made it over by the truck where it collapsed again. It was nearly dark by then so we put an old laundry basket over it so nothing would bother it and it could die in peace. Next morning I fully expect to see it was dead. Lifted the basket and it didn't move. Thought it was dead. But nope, wrong again. It got up and tried to follow me but was very weak. So we gave it a bowl of milk and some canned cat food which it happily ate. Then it had a nap and an hour later it managed to get up and wandered off into the tall grass by the barn. The next morning it came back, still weak but looking better. It drank more milk and gulped down more cat food and wandered off again. This went of for 3 more days. Never once tried to spray us. I guess it knew we were trying to help. Last time we saw it he was a happy looking little skunk full of life.
@plantdude You said a few week ago that you where you lived was surrounded by swamp land a rice paddies and the first thing I thought of was duck hunting! Didn't you post a pict of a lab who had shredded your cardboard box you planned to cure leaves in? Maybe it was someone else. Made me laugh though. That guilty look it had on its face was very familiar to me. All my dogs have been labs or lab crosses. One was a black lab Rottweiler cross. She was all black but looked like a rott. She was my 90 lb lap dog. Sweet girl but one of the best guard dogs ever. She tangled with a porcupine in late March one year. About the first week of May I noticed her face was swollen on one side. Figured it was a quill I missed so I took her to the vet. It wasn't. She had bone cancer. They cut out a big lump and took out a couple teeth which made here more comfortable but by July she was gone. She was 9. I still miss that girl. My best duck dog was like yours. We taught each other. lol He made it to 15 and still liked hunting birds when he was an old geezer dog. Couldn't do what he did when it was younger but that was ok. He just liked being there and I liked taking him. His son was doing all the real work by then. He was my best friend back in those days. Never was quite the same without him.