Off-Grid in West Virginia

Monday

Linda

This morning with eyes still glazed from sleep, I pulled back the window curtain and saw that the midnight marauder had struck once again. The suet cage door hung open on the side of the bird feeder. He didn’t rip it off this time, but I am sure he was disappointed when he saw there were no sweet suet cakes or black oil sunflower seeds to snack on. He pulled the hummingbird feeder off its hook and threw it on the ground when he was finished with it. I don’t believe there was much if anything in it either.

I could not believe that in all this mud around here he left no tracks. There were some indentations in the flower bed where the hummingbird feeder hung, but nothing distinguishable. I filled a bucket with pig feed and loaded it into the bed of the RTV (I love that thing). It was nice not to have to trudge all the way back to the pig pen wading through muddy clay and risk loosing one of my wellies boots along the way.

When I pulled up to the pig pen I could see that the bear had been upset that there were no treats left out for him earlier. He must have smelled the feed that the piglets had not finished the day before. When we put the chicken wire around the bottom of the fence we put it along the inside except for where the feed and water bins are located. We put it on the outside of the pen there because we already had the feed bins anchored down in place and they blocked the fence inside. Well, he peeled that chicken wire back like a ripe banana skin and stuck his big old paw through the openings of the cattle fence to get to the feed trough. I could see smears on the bottom of pan where he had scooped up some of the feed with his paw. He was a gentleman though and didn’t eat all of the piglets food.

Our plan to deter this nightly thief is to not have any food available. The bird feeder and hummingbird feeders will remain empty and any food left in the pig trough will have to be scooped out at night. I hung one of Sonny’s dirty work shirts on the fence hoping that the scent of a human might keep him at bay. I also brushed Ruby and placed the wads of hair around the fence base near the feed troughs. Lets hope he moves on because if not other drastic measures will have to taken. This drive through window is closed.

The marauders handiwork.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 16th, 2011 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Off-Grid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.