An Unwelcome Guest

A couple of weeks ago, one of my guys noticed a large hole in the ground going under our sun room. If you are a long-time blog friend, you may remember that we turned our deck into a sun room a while back. It is closed in on the bottom with treated plywood and then we put cultured stone on the plywood to finish it off.The stone and the plywood stop at the dirt level. The rest of the house has a basement.

Being concerned for the safety of our little Lucy girl, they immediately set up a live trap to try to catch whatever was hiding out under there. They were using veggies at bait. After not having any luck, or even seeing what the critter might be, my youngest decided to toss in a big wad of lit firecrackers one day. Still no luck.

Mr. tried to bait the box trap with a piece of chicken. The critter ate the chicken through the wire-it was gone the next day. So that started an online search for a place that could get wire snares here the cheapest and fastest. He tried putting a big stone over the hole, but it was moved out of the way and the hole was bigger the next day.

After the snares were ordered, they decided to put out my youngest son's trail cam to see if they could see what they were up against. They were thinking racoon because it was so smart in getting the chicken out of the wire box trap, and it was smart enough to move the stone.

The first night, the only pictures that came through were of a tail, and with it being black and white, dark and very grainy, it was kind of hard to really tell. So they cleared the pictures and set it back up the next night, and this is what we saw!

It's a very small, dark picture, but can you see right in the middle...they eye reflecting, and the...white stripe down the back!?!?

I'm soooo glad the firecrackers didn't scare it, and I'm sooo glad the snares haven't gotten here yet!!! Could you even imagine the stench coming into our house?!? How long would that smell last? My eyes are watering just thinking about it! I wonder if it had babies under there...ugh!

So, now we've been told to put Little Debbie oatmeal sandwich cookies in a medium sized box trap, they seem to prefer Little Debbie, and the smaller sized trap will keep it from being able lift its tail. That's all great advice, but my question is what do you do with it once you catch it?!?! If it were to die, wouldn't it release the odor?

We've also heard cat food works. We only have a dog, so Mr tried dog food and a can of tuna. He wired the can to the bottom of the trap so it can't tip it and get it out without going in, but the past two nights, the tuna is still sitting in the can. I think we're going to have to break out the Little Debbie's.