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Marauding Critters
By Richard P. vonHoorn, New Preston
Although my full-time job as proprietor of Hillside Studio Bed and Breakfast on Lake Waramaug keeps me busy, I always find time to take care of my ever-expanding garden in my backyard. It is a lot of fun, but it comes with a price.
First, those little baby plants have to survive cold nights and sometimes too-hot days. Then there are those little garden pests with funny names like nematodes, cabbage worm, potato beetle, rot, corn-worm, and (our all-time local nemesis) slugs. But then for the third assault on the struggling, growing things we have the "night critters," which come long after you have hit the sack and started to dream of that "vegetable Nirvana."
One morning recently, garden reality confronted me as I surveyed the dug-up soil and remains of squash and other vegetables strewn throughout my garden! Of course, I had installed a seven-foot plastic mesh fence to keep the deer population at bay, so I knew it must be a different species of "eating machine." I started to secure the bottom edge of the fence, then stopped. "Wait a minute," I mused, "it, or they, could probably climb over or under the fence, no matter what I did, anytime they wanted. So what was the solution? Of course. I'll set a trap!"
After buying a Have-a-Heart trap (one which does not harm its captives) from the local hardware store, I set it in a prominent location and baited it with cut-up sunfish caught in front of the house in Lake Waramaug. The next morning I checked the trap and found it sprung, bait gone, and no critter. That was curious. The next evening I repeated the routine. Come morning, I again found the trap sprung, bait gone, but this time the trap was found half-way down the path. "What is going on? Do we have a bear, raccoon, or possum?"
This was getting curiouser and curiouser! What we had here was a full blown mystery that needed solving. But what to do? What to do? I asked myself what Huck Finn would do in such a situation. Why, of course! He would catch more fish from the lake, reset the trap, and attach a long fishline to one end of the trap door. From there he would probably run the line up through the bedroom window and, when he went to bed, tie the other end of the line to his big toe, insuring that he would awaken smartly when the trap door was sprung. In so doing, he would solve the mystery of the "Night Marauder."
Now before you get the idea that I am a complete nut, I must state categorically that I did not attach the end of the line to my big toe. I did the next best thing. I attached the end of the line to a little school bell I received as a gift when I retired in 1987 from teaching art at Torrington High School. I just knew that someday it would come in handy as something other than a dust collector. Sure 'nuff, about midnight it jingled and woke me up with a start. This time I discovered a masked marauder in the guise of a raccoon. Of course, he had a feast eating all the bait, and in the morning I drove him to a remote area about five miles away and released him into the woods near a beautiful river. A week later, I caught and released another coon that may have been his mate.
After all the excitement, I am content that I solved the mystery of who was doing the damage to my garden, but there is still, and probably always will be, the mystery of how that raccoon was able to get the bait, spring the trap and get away without being caught. I think I'll name him Houdini.
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