Some varmit has been nibbling at the fresh growth on our acorn squash plants. We were pretty sure it was a groundhog because our neighbor spotted a few fresh holes in the ground below the garden. He had already armed his Have-a-heart trap with some fresh apple slices and asked if we would bring our trap down to augment his arsenal.
I went out back to get the trap and the flaps were down indicating someone had taken my bait, a corn cob from the fresh corn Rick and Monica had given us from their Vermont vacation. I looked in the cage and caught a glimpse of this grey and white thing. I was afraid to get too close because we had been smelling a neighborhood skunk lately while we read on the porch.
I went back down and told my neighbor that our trap was occupied and I thought it might be a skunk. He couldn’t wait to see for himself and interrupted his Rubino’s sub to come up and have a look. A former farm boy, he walked right up to the cage and said, “You caught a baby possum.”
He suggested I take it somewhere and unload it and he offered his pickup. He said, “Just so you know, it is technically illegal to take animals from one place to another so just don’t let him go in front of a cop.” So I drove down to the park entrance, where all the dog people meet, and let the little guy off. As I backed up to turn around in the last house’s driveway I saw a woman in the window watching me and possibly jotting down my neighbor’s license plate number.
Leave a comment