Cruel Irony

[grapeman]

As a vineyard owner and operator one of the biggest challenges is pest control as the grapes ripen. Every year I find myself trying to trap raccoons out of the vineyard and move them to an undisclosed location. The population has gradually been declining so I was beginning to get encouraged that I was winning the battle. A few weeks ago I had an adolescent from last year staggering around our house. I did not trust the raccoon since you could walk up and almost touch it. I got out a live trap, baited and set it in front of the raccoon about 5 feet from it. I walked out to the winery, turned around and it had followed me there! Believing it not healthy and a candidate for distemper or rabies, I reluctantly dispatched it.

I thought that was the end of that. However a week or so later my son Rick said he saw what he thought was a raccoon looking out of the loft door above the winery. The next day I heard baby raccoons crying above the winery! As much as I hate those buggers (and have raise them a couple times in the past), they decided to thumb their noses at me and have a litter in the very winery building that the wine is made in from the grapes I grow in the vineyard I keep ridding of their species! Dang they are bold and aggravating!

They have gotten big enough that I hope they vacate the premises soon and then they are fair game to be removed. Today they were very noisy running around overhead and even growling angrily at each other or me. I'm not sure which.

 

[barbiek]

The audacity of those buggers!

 

[dwhill40]

I'll never forget my fathers quote after an attempt to keep them out of our sweet corn patch growing near big woods, "Give em' 50,000 years and they'll be flying airplanes."

 

[Pat57]

You're a lot kinder than I. They would all have been dead, I hate raccoons, nothing but trouble.

 

[Sage]

Part of my pest problems have come from people live trapping and letting the critters go "in the country". I happen to live "in the country". Just get rid of them and save everyone a headache.

I figure they were making a living someplace else before I moved in and this is not part of their living, it's mine. Leave me alone and I'll leave you alone..... or

 

[grapeman]

I didn't trap the mother because then I would have the babies die up there and stink the place up. They seem to have moved out sometime Friday or Saturday. After I posted this I heard them in a corner that has an open soffit from a missing board (I need to replace it to prevent this). I went over to investigate their noise and the mother started growling at me or the kits, not sure which, so I left them alone. I haven't heard from them since. Hopefully they will move on and go miles away, but I really fully expect to trap them later. My relocation program usually involves a three dimensional moving program- a quarter mile away and a couple feet down. Never had one return............All I'm saying......

 

[Sage]

My cherries are just starting to get sweet and get some good color. The "cherry wars" are starting here. There's a strict no fly zone. If it flies it dies. Really doesn't to amount much. After a few shots out of the 410, the sparrows move on.

 

[grapeman]

Into that great cherry tree in the sky..............

 

[Johny99]

Oh, the joys of an early cherry season. We have given up. I've let our trees grow tall and the birds get the stuff I can't pick. Then again, I have a treaty with the rattlesnakes; if they stay on their side of the deer fence, I don't kill them. Of course, then there are the Beavers, can't kill them, ecology gets mad, so they Dam the creek and no irrigation. So why did I decide to move to the country and plant a vineyard? Oh, yeah, no racoons

 

[Sage]

Oh, the joys of an early cherry season. We have given up. I've let our trees grow tall and the birds get the stuff I can't pick. Then again, I have a treaty with the rattlesnakes; if they stay on their side of the deer fence, I don't kill them. Of course, then there are the Beavers, can't kill them, ecology gets mad, so they Dam the creek and no irrigation. So why did I decide to move to the country and plant a vineyard? Oh, yeah, no racoons

I hear you !! I'm lucky, I live 1/2 mile above the neighbor and they like cherries and other fruit too.....