Most of you know my neighborhood where I live. We don't live near a forest, or in a forest, but for some reason animals love our house! Last year when I was in our guest bathroom I kept hearing bird noises. Joe thought they were just loud because it was springtime and the birds just came back after the winter. But it got louder and louder as the days went by. Apparently the birds were getting into our fan vent pipe by pushing the vent cover open and climbing in. The birds had a nest inside our vent and had 3-4 babies inside the nest. In order for us to get the birds out, Joe had to go into the attic and replace the entire pipe because of the damage they did when inside the pipe. Needless to say we covered the vent twice in mesh screen so they cannot return.
We always see wild turkeys in our backyard and from time to time we see wild rabbits in our yard as well. We've had trouble with squirrels eating up our furniture on our back deck (we caught one in the act!). We also have had an ongoing problem with chipmunks burrowing down in our flower beds and along our foundation causing damage to the surrounding plants. Thankfully they haven't caused any leakage in our basement! We've only been successful at catching three of them in our live trap and we were able to release them at a nearby park.
Our latest animal friend we found a day last week in the evening after it got dark. Joe and I had been wondering why one of our planter boxes was growing flat on the top. We couldn't figure out why one was growing just fine and the other one was always flat. Joe had barbecued that evening so the lights were on illuminating our back deck. Joe looked out and saw a large rodent looking thing sitting on top of our planter box! He thought it might be a skunk, but I informed him that if it was a skunk we would definitely know it from the smell permeating our house! It was in fact an opossum hanging out on our planter box. We kept opening and closing our sliding door, hoping to scare him off the porch, but he just sat there. Joe even tried to go out near him and he would go over the side and we thought he was gone and then his head would pop back up and he would look at us. His tail would wrap around the banister of the deck and then he would hang down and then pull himself back up! I figured out that he probably came up the stairs, and wouldn't go over the side. We finally got him to go down the stairs after about a half hour of prodding.
So far our little "friend" hasn't come back to our deck, as far as we know! Hopefully he let his little opossum friends know that our deck is not the best hang out for them. We are definitely an animal house and we don't even own a pet of our own. I'm hoping that we have seen the last of any large rodents, it was pretty darn gross!
The only picture I took where you can actually see the opossum!
No comments:
Post a Comment