Warning: Contains potentially disturbing content
Oh, the stories I could tell about the experiences we’ve had with wildlife living on our little plot of land in Magnolia, Texas. It’s only an acre and half. But, we’ve had a lot of 4 legged and no-legged traffic over the years.
Born to hunt
Bred to be a hunter, our late Labrador Retriever, “R&B’s Pistol Packin’ Buddy” is a descendant of the champion hunter Pistol Pete, hence the name. Alas, Buddy was adopted by a non-hunting family. So, if he was going to reveal any of his inherited talents, it was going to have to be on his own accord.
Countless times, Buddy found ways to hone his innate hunting abilities without the guidance from his inept people. To us, he was our loving companion. Our Bud.
There was a time in our life when dogs lived outside; I am ashamed to admit. By the time we realized dogs need to live in the house, Buddy was in his elder years. During his outdoor life, he exterminated small critters such as rabbits, raccoons, opossums, cats and snakes galore.
The funniest critter calamity in Buddy’s life occurred with an opossum. At that time, our garage was set up with doggie beds, and a fan with the garage cracked open enough that they could get in and out.
One early morning, I walk out into the garage to find the dogs still asleep on their comfy cozy dog beds. To my surprise, lying next to Buddy’s head, on his bed was an opossum! Naturally, I believe that Buddy had once again killed a critter and brought it into his house as a gift for his people. Cats aren’t the only ones who offer their humans ghastly gifts.
I gasped when I saw this dead creature lying inches from my dog’s head. My reaction was loud enough to wake the dogs. I, immediately, called for Rick to come and take this poor, dead offering out of the garage and bury it. Disposing of a kill was a husband’s duty, after all. If he’s around.
Rick finds the nearest shovel to remove the remains off of the dog bed. I’m still aghast that Buddy had brought the thing in the garage and placed it on his bed. Rick scoops up the remains onto the critter removal device and starts to walk down the driveway to his typical burial spot.
Within seconds of his walk, the critter opens its eyes, hisses at Rick, jumps off the shovel and runs away. That darn thing was “playing dead” the entire time! We will never know how long it appeared dead while on the dog bed. It was either a brilliant strategy or the ‘possom was in a shock induced coma after coming face to face with Buddy.
Now, you may think that our dog, Buddy was a killing machine. OK, maybe he was. But there was one incident that proves he was a sweet soul, with a heart of gold. Rick and I were taking a walk on the “back forty.” Well, in reality, it is the back point.two.five (quarter acre).
The dogs were already patrolling their property. Buddy started walking towards us from the wooded area as he typically did to greet us. I noticed that his gait was slow and his mouth looked odd. His jaw was slightly open. My first inclination was he was carrying something in his mouth, such as a small kill. But, typically when this was the case, he would be strutting proudly with his trophy. This scenario was completely different.
Finally, he reaches us, standing inches away and looks up at me with his soulful brown eyes. Still, I’m wondering why he appears different. He, then, lowers his head to the ground and opens his big, soft mouth and deposits a tiny bunny at my feet. A newborn kitten as they are called, furless and blind.
After Buddy gingerly places the kitten at my feet, he looks up at me as if to say, “Mama, fix it.” Or, maybe it was, “Look what I found. Can I keep it?” My hunter; my 105-pound “tank” of a dog, surprised both of us that day, with his nurturing side.
Snake stories
We’ve had plenty of incidents with snakes over the years. Snakes in the grass; snakes in the trees, snakes in the house. Shivers.
Once, while I was enjoying a summer day on my float in the pool, reading a book; I swam with a snake. Neither the snake nor I enjoyed that swim, whatsoever.
I had been floating in the pool for about an hour when suddenly, a common brown snake appeared, swimming out of the pool skimmer. It happened so fast. I look up from my book to see this small snake swimming towards me. I scream and roll off of my float, trying to paddle away from the snake as fast as possible. If snakes could scream, I’ll bet it would have as well. We both frantically want to get away from each other.
I had the upper hand, as I was able to get out of the pool. Little Brown Snake did not have the ability to get out of the pool, try as he might.
I’ve no idea where the husband is at this particular moment in time. So, I had to deal with this alone. No problem. I get the net and fish Little Brown Snake out of the pool. I could have just let him free in the grass, but I didn’t especially want to fish him out again that day. So, I walk over to the 7’ privacy fence and catapult him over. Crisis averted, I get back in the pool to enjoy my day. AFTER I check both of the pool skimmers to ensure there were no other slithering swimmers.
Then, there was the time that Mr. and Mrs. CottonMouth decided to take up residence in the small patch of woods adjacent to our house. There is a creek about 100 yards behind our property, so it’s possible the two snakes went on a hunt, took a wrong turn and found their way to our house.
We first realized we had new residents when we were enjoying a lovely evening outside with a few friends. One of them said to us that she could have sworn she saw a large black snake catch a frog from a distance. At the time, I wasn’t concerned about her sighting.
Then, a few days later, in the late afternoon, I go outside to feed the dogs. At that time, I kept the dog food out in the garage where I fed them. I had the bowls in hand getting ready to fill them, and in my peripheral vision, see something long, thick and black against the garage wall. Once my mind grasped that this was a pretty big snake, I drop everything and call the dogs out of the garage and around to the back side of the house and close gates so they can’t get out.
Now what? The husband is still at work, so there is no delegating the task. I couldn’t find my snake exterminator of choice: the shovel. So, I grab the closest tool I could find. A hoe.
I am no stranger to removing snakes. If the snake is not venomous, I will merely remove the snake from the property and let it go on its merry, slithering way. I know a lot of you feel I should do the same with the copperheads, the corals and the cotton mouths of the world. If it makes you feel any better, I do not like killing even the venomous snakes. However, I will not put my dogs or my people in harm’s way. So, I will eradicate the poisonous snakes.
So, armed with my hoe and wearing my knee-high rain boots, I go in search of this big black snake in the garage. By the time I had gotten back, the snake had made its way around the wall and behind the water heater. Great. I had no choice but to poke at it to get it to come out. Mind you; cotton mouth snakes are aggressive. Already armed with this knowledge helped me in my predicament. I had to make sure that I was well out of its reach as I was poking it. It started making its way out but stopped to curl up and display its mouth wide open at this woman poking at it threateningly.
That sight alone was enough to get me swinging. My hoe was now an ax. Did you know that these snakes are extremely heavy bodied? I had two things against me if you are taking score. Firstly, this snake’s body was thick. Secondly, the hoe does not have the same effect as a round nose shovel. I’m hacking at this snake, and nothing was happening, it seemed. Finally, although the thing still had its head attached, it flips over now laying on its back.
Had I won the battle? I call Rick who knows nothing of this escapade. I’m shaking like a leaf, my heart is racing, and I’m telling him about the situation. About 3 or 4 minutes have passed by and all of a sudden, this damn snake flips back over and starts slithering away.
I scream into the phone that I have to go; the snake is still alive! Without going into even more gory detail, I shall sum it up to say that I finally did win the battle, and this snake’s head was mine. I’m very apologetic to this poor thing as I scoop it up and dispose of it. Scariest snake incident of my life.
Soon after, about three days or so, Rick gets his turn. With Mr. CottonMouth.
I’m at work. Rick is home ill with bronchitis. The time is mid to late morning, and he walks out into the garage to investigate why the dogs are barking. Because he was ill, he is wearing only his bathrobe and house shoes. He takes a look underneath his toolbox and sees the big black snake, curled up and mouth wide open. Shivers.
First things first, he puts the dogs in the house to keep them safe. Then, his plan was to get properly dressed for snake battle. As he walks inside, he hears a siren. He looks out the front window and sees a state Constable’s vehicle. What?! He has a large cottonmouth snake in his garage. He is in his bathrobe. Bedhead hair and codeine laced cough medicine breath. And now, he has the police at the end of his driveway.
Rick must stop what he is doing to chat with the officer. What must they think of this sight? They ask him if he is “John Doe”. Rick says no, but we bought the house from him. It seems that the prior owner of the house had a warrant for his arrest.
Now all is clear about who we are and why they are here. The officer asks Rick if he is ok. Rick explains his dilemma and how they drove up just as he is about to take care of the situation. The officer asks if he would like some help getting the snake out of the garage. He was trying to be funny and said: “I’ll shoot it for you.” Then Rick said in jest, “I think the bullet might ricochet, probably not a good idea.” The officer then seriously asked if he would like some help. Rick said, “Sure if you want to help, that would be great.” The officers got out of the car, walked with him to the garage and one said “Yep, there’s a snake. A pretty good sized one too.” Thankfully, for Rick’s sake, these two officers took care of the snake. One by sweeping it out from underneath the toolbox with his expandable baton. Then, Rick gladly handed over the shovel, and the other officer took care of the rest. His heroes.
To this day, I joke with him about our two different experiences with Mr. and Mrs. CottonMouth. My snake was bigger, and I fought my battle alone. His snake was smaller, and it took two armed police officers to take care of his predicament.
For those taking score, I win.
The Racoon Roundup
The last story I will share with you in this chronicle (seriously, I could write a book), is about the incident that Rick had with a wily raccoon.
One evening, he heard a ruckus out on the back porch. He peeked out the window to find a raccoon attempting to remove the lid off of the garbage can. Rick looks at him; the raccoon looks at Rick. A momentary meeting of the minds. Then the critter decides he better leave.
The next morning when Rick goes outside, he notices the trash cans on the side of the house had been tipped over. There was garbage everywhere. From the sighting the night before, he knew the culprit. Rick borrows a live trap to capture and relocate the scoundrel who has decided to hang around the house for free goodies.
He places the live trap up at the front of the property with some leftover beef ribs inside for bait. His intention is to leave it there overnight and hopefully have the rascal trapped so that he can take it someplace else to rummage.
The next morning, he walks up front only to find a strange albino looking cat in the trap. As he walks over towards the caged feral cat, it begins to thrash around inside the trap so violently that its face started bleeding. Rick became concerned for the cat, so he let some time go by so it would settle. Then, came back with a sheet to cover the cage so the crazy cat couldn’t see him. He moved the cage closer to the wrought iron gate, opened the cage door and the cat ran out of the cage, through the gate and into the street. It turned around to look at the human who had trapped him. Rick apologized to it for terrifying and hurting him.
That evening, he tried again. This time he brought the live trap up by the house where we keep garbage cans. He leaves some beef rib bait along with some sardines in the trap. Again, his intention is to leave it overnight and check it in the morning.
The next morning, he walks out to the trap. He found no cat, no raccoon, and no bait. What he did find, however, was a large pile of raccoon poop with the trap door activated. We have no idea how the raccoon got out of the trap after he ate. But, wasn’t it nice of the raccoon to leave Rick a gift to show how much he enjoyed the meal.
If you are taking score, it’s Rick 0. Critters 2.