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momma_d_gw

I wish they were squirrels.........

momma_d
17 years ago

I'm very fortunate to not have a squirrel problem because our dogs keep them away. I always laugh my head off at the posts everyone makes regarding the tree rats. I love the creative thoughts on what to do with the little pests. Now, I have a much bigger, dangerous problem that has made our ten acres their turf - a mother coyote and her four or five pups.

Our property is bordered by another ten acres of woods behind us. We've always had coyotes cruise through the pasture and have lost some chickens to them over the twenty years we've lived here. My husband has only had to shoot one of them that was after the lambs one spring. We've managed to co-exist with them until now. I started hearing what sounded like a whole pack of them yipping out behind the barn at night about a month ago. Early one morning about three weeks ago, I saw the pups chasing and eating grasshoppers at the pond. For the next two days, the entire family hung around the pond and the pasture like it was their living room ( to them it IS their living room). We decided it was time to discourage them and started spending a lot of time at the pond with our dogs. We drove the tractor down there and tore out some blackberries and nettles just to create a disturbance in their little paradise. After a week of messing with their domain, they disappeared. Until yesterday................

My Dad (who is 81 and rather frail) lives on the five acres next to us. He went out to see if his sprinklers were working in the afternoon and the mom coyote was in his yard. When he yelled at her to shoo her away, she growled at him and bared her teeth. She didn't leave until he threw an empty flower pot at her. Shortly after that, my husband went out to feed the dogs. We keep Bert, our german shorthaired pointer, in a fenced area during the day. She always takes a high speed lap around the house when you let her out before she has her dinner. Yesterday, she didn't come for dinner after her dash around the house. When I heard my husband calling her, I went outside just in time to see her running up the hill from the pond with the mom coyote hot on her tail. She chased her almost up to the house. I've never seen a coyote chase a dog before. It's always been the other way around. She's protecting her young and I admire her for that. But not enough to let her and her happy little family gang up and kill my dogs. Or my elderly, slow moving donkey.

Those that are squeamish may not want to read this part of the story. You know how sometimes you just get a feeling about something and have to act on it or it'll drive you nuts? I got one of these nagging feelings after yesterday's events. My horse died in January and I couldn't bear the thought of having the rendering truck come and take him away. We have a backhoe on our tractor so my husband buried him out behind the barn. I haven't walked out there for a long time because it still tears me up inside. But I went out there yesterday evening and discovered that they (the coyotes) have been dining on his remains! I have to commend them on their sense of smell, tenacity and digging skills. They've excavated an enormous amount of earth to get to him. I went out this morning and checked to see if they started excavating again - my husband re-covered his grave last night with a ton of soil and rocks. They were busy digging last night. Yuck.........

Now that we know there is no possibility of them leaving, since they have 1000 pounds of rotten flesh at their disposal, we've declared war. Since there are five or six of them, I've called a professional nuisance animal guy. They usually trap, then shoot them. I'm pi$$ed and want one of their tails to hang from the barn. Part of me feels really bad about it, though. They are just doing what coyotes do. But, on the other hand, they will start killing my dogs, cats and anything else they can chase down. What really creeps me out is the thought of of them going after Dad, him falling a breaking his hip. Dang, pesky varmints!

Laurie

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