It VIOLATED my space...Now it must go!!!!UPDATE!!HELP!!OMG????

[bryan99705]

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And now we witness this thread go all downhill

 

[GLBRWyans]

Living around the swamps and bayous of Louisiana have inoculated me against most night creatures ; except for that ,whatever it was you had lurking about recently .

Or the fear of should I say .

 

[Roark]

We're in a decidedly unique area where the "big city" limits are just a few miles away, and yet there is a huge State forest and small family farms starting just down the street. That said we have a plethora of wild life, both welcome and some - not so much.

We've identified four different fox dens within a few hundred yards of our front door, and at various times see foxes wandering our suburban neighborhood in the middle of the day. Given their daylight brashness, as well as a very mangy and scruffy looking coat, we always suspect the worst and contact the County animal control folks to intervene. Over the last five years they have been successful exactly none times. This is partially what precipitated us searching out the dens ourselves. Eventually one fox was captured, after our dogs jumped the fence and cornered it under a neighbors car until the authorities arrived. Animal control tested the fox, and our vet checked out the dogs, but no rabies were found, just a poorly nourished fox with a nappy coat.

Having been permanently emotionally scarred by 'Old Yeller' as a youth (thanks a lot Walt!), and having spent a lot of time in the woods growing up and in the service, I never consider rabies to be a possibility, but rather treat every wild encounter with that as a persistent probability. Better safe than sorry...and I'm not about to ask my neighbors to pay for me having escaped a thinning of the gene pool (if ya let the first dummy die of hydrophobia I'm pretty sure the other dummies will get the message).

Anywho...livin' amongst Marlin Perkins' friends we have grown accustomed to the netherworldian shrieks and screams of the mating and stressed out fox populace. While we don't exactly enjoy it, it is something of a badge of honor to be entertaining guests on the patio and casually dismiss what sounds like a woman being ripped apart by hyenas as "oh it's just the foxes". Keeps visitors from overstaying their welcome.

One note about the possums, to regurgitate something already stated; they are one of the apparently few predators that consistently take rats, so in spite of their other unpopular tendencies, I would much rather deal with their occasional intrusions than an unchecked rat population. Out here in the wild and wooly suburbs of Baltimore, most of the neighbors routinely ignore the County's admonishments (and zoning laws) about storing their fire wood 18" up off of the ground, cleaning up after their dogs, and leaving pet food out. As a result, evidence of rats are easily found just about anywhere that you choose to bother looking. Folks are really pretty clueless about just how persistent Mother Nature is even in the midst of mini-vans and Chem-Lawn. Learn the lesson that our government never seems to quite grasp...that of unintended consequences and the old science class law regarding actions causing equal and opposite reactions.

How crazy is it that we (and by that I mean particularly us suburbanites) seem to dedicate so much time and energy to beating the wild out, stripping all of the trees and moving the soil to build, just so we can spend the rest of our days wishing we had shade, fewer bugs and greener lawns? Bug zappers to replace toads and Purple Martins, Ortho and Round-Up in place of compost, and exotic pets instead of nature... or is it just me?

 

[aprophet]

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because of daylight and pituitary glands K-9's drop their fur this time of the year they look terrible and most animal control folks I have run into have mostly tender hearts and do not want to catch the animals here in Va the home owner normally Hires an ADC Trapper or a NWCO to get rid of problem animals and BTW fox are fairly easy to catch

 

[Roark]

To be honest, I'm sure that they are easy to trap, given their apparent willingness to venture forth through 'Leave it to Beaver" town in broad daylight. That is the one thing that tends to freak me out since I had always been led to believe that they were principally nocturnal, so anytime we've seen them mid day we're all thinkin' rabies. Interesting to know about the glandular issue though. Now if there's any chance that they eat feral cats, I'll start building fox habitat tomorrow. Someone did mention that coyotes have a taste for felines, but we've terribly few around here as yet. The foxes are particularly bold at night and love to torment my Aussies by sitting just under their favorite bay window in the moon light, and after a snow their paw prints regularly ring the house and cover the porch. We leave no food outdoors to tempt them, but we also have an abundance of birds and rabbits that nest close by.

I'm not aware of the O.P.'s location particulars but here in suburban B'more we have sprawled through all of the available habitat save a few parks. The parks and forests surround local waterways for the most part, but due to their close proximity to residential areas hunting has been very restricted over the years. Our State government's general dislike of citizens owning any type of fire arm renders the "shoot'em" solution pretty moot regardless. Discharging a weapon is a liberty reserved for their police force. Meanwhile our deer populations are now getting so cramped that one local 2 mile stretch of road now experiences over two hundred deer strikes a year. The local golf course is an exercise in patience as you encounter countless geese and deer grazing on Chem-Lawn's finest mid fairway. We routinely have herds of as many as a dozen visiting our hostas and lillies (it's like their salad bar / buffet), and growing a vegetable garden requires a fairly extensive deer defense repertoire of mechanical barriers and scare scents

I realize that we may represent the top of the food chain, but it's still disturbing to be blessed with all of this wildlife and end up with most of the locals just complaining about them being pests. Trapping and relocating them wouldn't be so bad if there was someplace to relocate them to, but we're in the midst of one huge megalopolis that basically extends from Philly to D.C. The few breaks of potential habitat that remains therein are just plain overpopulated. As I mentioned, we can see four den sites from our front porch. When the foxes and local dogs all get riled up it makes for a pretty hair raising chorus.

We just try to live and let live, so I'm hoping that our "pests" can be kept at bay without too many casualties. on either side.

 

[Komaki]

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BINGO!

 

[cindy99]

definetlydeb - Hi neighbor! Tioga County here!

We usually hear that noise when a coyote (or something) gets a rabbit...

rabbits really make a terrible noise - makes all the hair on my arms stand up...

We have caught opossum in our live trap - one decided that he wanted to live under my coop - hubby took care of him while I hid inside in tears. It had to be done though. That new TSC in Mansfield has the 2-pack of traps on sale every couple of weeks.

 

[akcountrygrrl]

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I'm of the opinion that it is cruel to relocate them to another area that you have not done the research on to know whether or not that is a suitable place to relocate to. Do you take into consideration the existing populations of animals? Is there adequate food to support the existing population as well as the new animals you are introducing? Is there a chance you are transporting an animal that carries a contagion (viral, bacterial, parasitical, etc) that will now be passed on to other animals in the area and wipe out that entire population? Is the animal you are transporting used to foraging/hunting in the new area? Or will it now starve to death because you, in your "kindness" have plopped it down into an area where it has not been taught where/how to hunt/forage by its parents? Are you relocating a young animal that may still need its parents and may not have learned completely how to hunt/forage on its own? Are you now, by relocating it, exposing the animal to new predators that it doesn't know how to avoid? Are you putting the animal in another's territory where it now has to fight just to live? To me relocating without doing all of the research or even thinking about the situation you are putting this animal into is cruel.