I was prepping vegetables for dinner when realized I had a
window peeper pressing his nose up against the glass door on my sun porch. I
was shocked. What the heck is that? I
thought. He was tomcat big, brown and fat with an slight overbite and he was only 15
feet away. When I moved closer to the door, he didn’t move. It crossed my mind that he
was a monster rat but his tail was hairy and in the moment I thought rats all
have flat tails void of fur. I’m not sure if that’s true but the part that
freaked me out the most---after the rat thought passed---was it wasn’t afraid
of me. Is he rabid? I worried. Back
and forth between my dining room and sun porch glass doors he went, like he was
determine to get inside. If he had a key, he would have used it, but foam didn’t followed in his wake. Nope, not rabid. Thankfully,
Levi the Mighty Schnauzer was guarding the bedroom windows so I didn’t have to
deal with his and my own freaking out at the same time.
The window peeper hung around for a four-five minutes while I
scared myself over how often I leave those doors wide open. Ohmygod, if the
window peeper had come by the day before, he could have walked right into the
house! Finally, he found his way down the steps to the dog yard where he searched
for and found a place by the gate where he squeezed through the slats to
freedom. I ventured out on the deck and watched him move along the lattice work
at the bottom of the deck, me standing less than three feet above him, until he disappeared
under my Blue Spruce.
I hopped on the computer and located a website with videos
of various wildlife of Michigan. My window peeper was a woodchuck! I didn’t
see him the rest of the day and Levi didn’t get his backyard run that night. But
from a woodchuck website I learned that harassment is a good way to
get them to move their dens and it recommended dogs to do the harassing. Levi
will be happy when I tell him that. Also under the heading of harassing techniques
is to plant garlic around the opening of its burrow or pepper the area with talcum powder or
blood meal. Traps, of course, and poison bait were also mentioned. It’s
possible to co-exist with a woodchuck living close-by, I read, as long as it
doesn’t undermine your foundation or steps---or in my case, the Blue Spruce. I’m
glad I was able to identify the window peeper and it wasn’t a monster rat. If
it had been a rat, I would’ve dialed 1-800-WILL-KILiT so fast the phone would have
been smoking.
The idea of killing the woodchuck just because he doesn’t
pay taxes where I live isn’t in my DNA and according to what I read if I’m
going to harass the critter to move out of his burrow the ideal timing is now
through September. He’ll still have time to settle into new digs before winter.
You also can’t harass or bait them in the winter, the website said,
because the females will have a litter of babies down in the burrows and it’s inhumane
to kill the adults and let the babies starve. In the spring I’d have to wait
until three weeks after seeing the babies above ground before I could start harassing
the happy family. I
have no idea what blood meal is but talcum powder sounds less Stephen King-ish
so I’ll start with that. Jeez, and I thought chipmunks are a pain-in-butt for the way
the taunt the dog. Wait until he sees the window peeper up close and personal. It's almost as big as he is. Operation Harassment will begin tonight when I will let
Levi inspect the burrow. I hope he marks the place with pee-mail that says, “This
is your eviction notice. Get out!”
It’s interesting the wide range of opinions people have
about killing wildlife. When Cecil the famous lion was killed recently it was a hot topic at a debate website where I go. My husband was a life-long hunter. I understand the
science of game management to protect the health and size of the herds out in
the wild. I understand the ethical differences between a hunter with honor and
those without---the ones who poach or take part in canned and big game
trophy hunts. In my opinion, the latter categories of 'hunters' have scum-filled testicles. Sorry,
if you’re someone with a dead-head from the Serengeti hanging on your wall. I’m
not impressed.
Don was a hunter with honor. He followed the laws to the letter, never took a shot that wasn’t guaranteed to be a kill-shot, and he never baited game animals. He didn’t believe in those things and his manhood-ego didn't depend on him coming home with a dead animal strapped to the hood of his truck. In the last decade of my husband going out west during hunting season, he got a bigger thrill out taking award worthy photographs of wildlife using a telegraphic lens that would have been the envy of any paparazzi. It happened to my dad in his last years of hunting, too. The older they got, the less they had the heart for bringing down an animal that was minding his own business. The older we all get the more we appreciate the frailness of life and the senselessness of not co-existing with nature. If my window peeper could talk, he'd probably say that's why he moved into a widow's yard. He knew I'd be too old and soft to have 1-800-WILL-KILiT on my speed dial. ©
Don was a hunter with honor. He followed the laws to the letter, never took a shot that wasn’t guaranteed to be a kill-shot, and he never baited game animals. He didn’t believe in those things and his manhood-ego didn't depend on him coming home with a dead animal strapped to the hood of his truck. In the last decade of my husband going out west during hunting season, he got a bigger thrill out taking award worthy photographs of wildlife using a telegraphic lens that would have been the envy of any paparazzi. It happened to my dad in his last years of hunting, too. The older they got, the less they had the heart for bringing down an animal that was minding his own business. The older we all get the more we appreciate the frailness of life and the senselessness of not co-existing with nature. If my window peeper could talk, he'd probably say that's why he moved into a widow's yard. He knew I'd be too old and soft to have 1-800-WILL-KILiT on my speed dial. ©
