Chickens will teach you many things.
1.) No matter how hard you try to conatin them, they will eventually find a way to escape;
2.) No matter how hard you try to protect them from the evils of the world, they will eventually die;
3.) When a rooster starts with his head bob, he's going to turn mean; and
4.) Everyone will tell you trapping mink is next to impossiable to do.
But of course we still try... to do all of these above...except when the rooster turns mean, we get rid of him.
Anyhoo, we have begun our adventures in trying to capture and bring to justice, Mr. Mink. Thankfully, I learned a lot from weasel trappin' and have not had to clean up any messes in the microwave. I DID have to buy sardines for the first time in my life.
Last year when we tried to get a weasel I bought chicken livers. I was able to conspicuasly hide them in my over-flowing grocery cart. Buying the sardines this year was a little different. First of all, it is no longer a surprise to anyone, espically small town Hillsboro, that I am expecting. My protrouding belly and I went to Krogers and purchased 2 cans of sardines (so many choices!), a bag of Cuties oranges that I have been eating like crazy, an issue of Pregnany and Newborn I found in the magazines and a Three Musketeers bar that was my reward for 30 minutes of swimming. I figured it didn't look good a pregnant woman buying sardines (no fish prego ladies!), so I tucked the cans behind my magazine, hoping I wouldn't see anyone I knew, and rushed to an empty U-Scan.
After my purchasing experience, the next exciting adventure was actually opening the can of sardines. Now I'm sorry, but anyone who actually buys those things and eats them...you need help! That crap is gross! What is the difference between eating what comes in those cans and just cathing a small fish, chopping it in two and sucking it down right on the banks of the pond!?
Only weird people and mink like sardines.
Dan and I had purchased two different kinds of mink traps from Bass Pro plus yet another interesting concoction called mink lure...which smells fishy.
We ran into an interesting guy who has done some trapping before and gave us a few pointers. For instance, you have to boil new traps in this powdery stuff the hunting stores sell, or if you only have a couple of traps, you can add walnuts and other nuts found outdoors to your boiling water of traps. This helps make the traps smell more like nature and no so suspious to the varmits. Also, there is a huge bar of wax you are supposed to rub on your traps so that arms and limbs can't slip trhough the bars of the trap. We didn't buy any wax and we boiled our traps in water and walnuts. The thought ran through my mind of using surfboard wax, but I think minks would be more suspicious of coconut smelling wax than plain old human scent.
A few nights ago we set our first trap. Dan placed theset trap in front of a small enclousre he quickly made and we put the sardines inside. That way the mink would have to go through the trap in order to get to the fishes inside.
I knew we would be humbled. The next morning the seafood was gone and the trap was moved aside. We don't know if the mink was still around and pushed the trap aside (mink are smart, or so we have been told) or if a cat figured it out.
We have a long way to go in this trapping process. I knew we would catch anything with a flimsy box on our first night. But it didn't hurt to try.
Today's sardine experience was even more embarrassing. I bought 2 more cans while at the dollar store, along with ghrahm crackers and peanut M&M's.
...cluck... cluck... cluck...
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