The rattling I heard next to my front door came from the wrong animal. A frantic squirrel.

....sigh....

We're paying $260 to trap raccoons, and so far we've incarcerated an opossum, squirrel, and the neighbor's cat. I looked at the squirrel, and he looked at me... between squirrelish bouts of frantic rage. I thought to myself, "I'm going to have to let you out of there, aren't I?" The squirrel looked at me and thought, "Aaarrghh!!!" or whatever squirrels think when they're trapped, far from nuts.

I left the squirrel in the cage for the time being, thinking that an earlier parole would do nothing for his rehabilitation, and went inside. I called our trapper, George, for advice.

"George, I've got a squirrel."

"Squirrel, eh? Hmmm... "

"If I leave him in the cage, will the raccoons think something's up and stay away from the other cage?" (There are two cages, in close proximity. One was still awaiting a tenant at this point, but with a wild eyed squirrel in the next cage over, it wasn't too inviting.)

"Probably. I could come out to release him, but it will cost you a day."

With that, I realized I would have to be the squirrel emancipator. I grabbed some heavy gloves, my African Bat Whacker and went to work. First I needed light, so I aimed the car headlights at the bushes. Next I inspected the cage. It didn't look too bad, or too complicated. However, every time the squirrel thrashed at me insanely, I sort of lost my train of thought.

Ok, looks like I have to lift that latch.. then push this bar... "Squeak! Rattle! Crash!"

"Aaaaghh!! Settle down you stupid squirrel!!"

He was probably begging for his life in squirrelish, telling me about his 3 poor children with scarcely an acorn. I was trying to free him, but the language barrier was just too much. Not certain of his intentions, I decided to use my African Bat Whacker as a tool to manipulate any of the parts that were within nibble range. I started to release the catch, with the squirrel strangely calm, sensing this was an important moment in his life. The cage door was no longer locked, but I still needed to lift it up. Maybe the squirrel sensed his moment, and didn't want to wait to see if I was liberator or conqueror, and he dashed himself against the cage with all the fury a reckless squirrel can muster. The door lifted! He was off! Freedom!!

His tail flashed back and forth as he sped off into the night, to a squirrel wife who would wonder where he had been all day. As for me, newly christened mountain man and animal handler extraordinare, I sheathed my African Bat Whacker and went triumphantly inside to the womenfolk. Today, I had become a man.

Rebaiting the trap was fairly gross. Cat food and peanut butter... mmm. However, I must have done something right because the next day, the neighbor's cat was mine for the ransoming. This time, I didn't reach for my ABW, and like the superhero I had become, released the nervous cat "au naturale".

I think the moral of this story is that if we don't take care of our raccoon problem through George, I'm now an experienced trapper, and will take care of business on my own. So, I'm officially taking orders for caps and pelts of all sizes.

PS We did catch a raccoon today. We caught him with Marie's concoction of cat food & peanut butter. She must have the magic ratio. Stay tuned for more manly tales of wilderness survival!